Top 78 Barry Goldwater Quotes
#1. I have characterized Nixon as a loner, a cold man with great self-confidence and a one-track mind centered on the advancement of Richard Nixon.
Barry Goldwater
#3. A man from the west will fight over three things: water, women and gold, and usually in that order.
Barry Goldwater
#4. Today neither of our two parties maintains a meaningful commitment to the principle of States' Rights. The 10th Amendment is not a 'general assumption' but a rule of law. States rights mean that states have a right to act or not to act, as they see fit, in areas reserved to them.
Barry Goldwater
#5. The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
Barry Goldwater
#7. Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.
Barry Goldwater
#8. I fear Washington and centralized government more than I do Moscow.
Barry Goldwater
#9. After one of his [Hubert Humphrey] long-winded harangues I suggested he had probably been vaccinated with a phonograph needle. He responded by saying that I would have been a great success in the movies working for Eighteenth Century-Fox.
Barry Goldwater
#10. If you don't mind smelling like peanut butter for two or three days, peanut butter is darn good shaving cream.
Barry Goldwater
#11. You don't need to be straight to fight and die for your country. You just need to shoot straight.
Barry Goldwater
#12. And here we encounter the seeds of government disaster and collapse - the kind that wrecked ancient Rome and every other civilization that allowed a sociopolitical monster called the welfare state to exist.
Barry Goldwater
#13. Religious factions will go on imposing their will on others unless the decent people connected to them recognize that religion has no place in public policy. They must learn to make their views known without trying to make their views the only alternatives
Barry Goldwater
#14. I'd rather see a woman elected ... They understand they can't spend more money than the old man brings home.
Barry Goldwater
#15. We have enough trouble with women without giving them M16 rifles.
Barry Goldwater
#16. I won't say that the papers misquote me, but I sometimes wonder where Christianity would be today if some of those reporters had been Matthew, Mark, Luke and John.
Barry Goldwater
#18. When fraternities are not allowed, Communism flourishes. Young men who are inexperienced but have faith are more useful than older, experienced men without faith. The fraternity system is a bastion of American strength.
Barry Goldwater
#19. American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.
Barry Goldwater
#20. We are on the Colorado ... that means something more to me than thoughts of electrical power or a harnessed river.
Barry Goldwater
#21. Can any of us refute the wisdom of Madison and the other framers? Can anyone look at the carnage in Iran, the bloodshed in Northern Ireland or the bombs bursting in Lebanon and yet question the dangers of injecting religious issues into the affairs of state?
Barry Goldwater
#22. You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.
Barry Goldwater
#23. Some programs have been theatrical masterpieces, but all we're seeing is the negative side of nuclear war.
Barry Goldwater
#24. It is safe to say that the U.S. Congress is now run by paid staffers, not by people elected to do the job.
Barry Goldwater
#25. The only summit meeting that can succeed is the one that does not take place.
Barry Goldwater
#26. I am a conservative Republican, but I believe in democracy and the separation of church and state. The conservative movement is founded on the simple tenet that people have the right to live life as they please as long as they don't hurt anyone else in the process.
Barry Goldwater
#27. Trade unions infringe upon the property rights of company owners.
Barry Goldwater
#28. I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.
Barry Goldwater
#29. The Republicans have a positive talent for self-destruction.
Barry Goldwater
#30. It's political Daddyism and it's as old as demagogues and despotism.
Barry Goldwater
#31. You've got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you're going to hit civilians.
Barry Goldwater
#32. We now have a president who tries to save money by turning off lights in the White House, even as he heads toward a staggering addition to the national debt. "L.B.J." should stand for Light Bulb Johnson.
Barry Goldwater
#34. I have the unmitigated gall to think that I could lead men anywhere, business, politics or combat.
Barry Goldwater
#35. To my mind the single essential element on which all discoveries will be dependent is human freedom.
Barry Goldwater
#36. The best thing Clinton could do - I think I wrote him a letter about this, but I'm not sure - is to shut up. He has no discipline.
Barry Goldwater
#37. The fellow has absolutely no principles."Money and gall" is all he has.
Barry Goldwater
#38. I could have ended the war in a month. I could have made North Vietnam look like a mud puddle.
Barry Goldwater
#39. It is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions.
Barry Goldwater
#40. Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description.
Barry Goldwater
#41. Unlimited campaign spending eats at the heart of the democratic process.
Barry Goldwater
#42. To insist on strength ... is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering.
Barry Goldwater
#44. Small men, seeking great wealth or power, have too often and too long turned even the highest levels of public service into mere personal opportunity.
Barry Goldwater
#45. I certainly believe in aliens in space, and that they are indeed visiting our planet. They may not look like us, but I have very strong feelings that they have advanced beyond our mental capabilities.
Barry Goldwater
#46. Government should stay the hell out of people's business.
Barry Goldwater
#47. The constitution is an instrument, above all, for LIMITING the functions of government.
Barry Goldwater
#48. I've always said I have nothing against a woman doing anything a man can do as long as she gets home in time to cook dinner.
Barry Goldwater
#49. Without the National Federation of Republican Women, there would be no Republican Party.
Barry Goldwater
#50. We cannot allow the American flag to be shot at anywhere on earth if we are to retain our respect and prestige
Barry Goldwater
#51. I thought of something my old coach at Staunton had often said: 'We win some, we lose some, and some get rained out; but we always suit up.'
Barry Goldwater
#52. While I am a great believer in the free enterprise system and all that it entails, I am an even stronger believer in the right of our people to live in a clean and pollution-free environment.
Barry Goldwater
#53. I say that when you elect a president you want a man to manage the legitimate business of your government. The government that is big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take it away.
Barry Goldwater
#54. Women are hard enough to handle now without giving them a gun!
Barry Goldwater
#55. When white and black and brown and every other color decide they're going to live together as Christians, then and only then are we going to see an end to these troubles.
Barry Goldwater
#56. Well, once you've been in the Canyon and once you've sort of fallen in love with it, it never ends ... it's always been a fascinating place to me, in fact I've often said that if I ever had a mistress it would be the Grand Canyon.
Barry Goldwater
#57. History has to judge every man who served. I don't know how they're going to treat me. I may be the worst S.O.B. that ever came down the pike. But I won't lose any sleep over it. I just like to be remembered as an honest person who tried.
Barry Goldwater
#58. I think any man in business would be foolish to fool around with his secretary. If it's somebody else's secretary, fine.
Barry Goldwater
#59. I made an effort to find out what was in the building at Wright Patterson Air Force Base where the information is stored that has been collected by the Air Force, and I was understandably denied this request. It is still classified above Top Secret.
Barry Goldwater
#60. The time has come to recognize the United Nations for the anti-American, anti-freedom organization that it has become. The time has come for us to cut off all financial help, withdraw as a member, and ask the United Nations to find headquarters location outside the United States that is
Barry Goldwater
#61. A woman has a right to an abortion. That's a decision that's up to the pregnant woman, not up to the pope or some do-gooders or the Religious Right.
Barry Goldwater
#62. There's no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom.
Barry Goldwater
#63. I understand Jacqueline Kennedy has redone the White House in eighteenth-century style. Why, then, I'd fit in perfectly.
Barry Goldwater
#64. None of us here in Washington knows all or even half of the answers ... If you love your country, don't depend on handouts from Washington for your information. If you cherish your freedom, don't leave it all up to big government.
Barry Goldwater
#65. It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president ... except me.
Barry Goldwater
#66. I've played everything - baseball, football, basketball. I can still swim a mile a day. That's why I can't walk.
Barry Goldwater
#68. The big thing is to make this country ... quit discriminating against people just because they're gay. You don't have to agree with it, but they have a constitutional right to be gay ... They're American citizens.
Barry Goldwater
#69. I think some highly secret government UFO investigations are going on that we don't know about
and probably never will unless the Air Force discloses them.
Barry Goldwater
#70. Nixon was the most dishonest individual I have ever met in my life. He lied to his wife, his family, his friends, his colleagues in the Congress, lifetime members of his own political party, the American people and the world.
Barry Goldwater
#71. I think the President ought to bring everybody that's in American uniform back because we're headed for war.
Barry Goldwater
#72. We shall return to proven ways - not because they are old, but because they are true.
Barry Goldwater
#73. If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.
Barry Goldwater
#74. Where is the politician who has not promised to fight to the death for lower taxes- and who has not proceeded to vote for the very spending projects that make tax cuts impossible?
Barry Goldwater
#75. Forced integration is just as wrong as forced segregation.
Barry Goldwater
#76. Equality, rightly understood as our founding fathers understood it, leads to liberty and to the emancipation of creative differences; wrongly understood, as it has been so tragically in our time, it leads first to conformity and then to despotism.
Barry Goldwater
#78. Conservatism therefore looks upon the enhancement of man's spiritual nature as the primary concern of political philosophy. Liberals, on the other hand, - in the name of a concern for "human beings" - regard the satisfaction of economic wants as the dominant mission of society.
Barry Goldwater
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