Top 80 Barry M. Goldwater Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “A government big enough to give you everything you want is big enough to take everything you have.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

2. “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

3. “Any pilot can describe the mechanics of flying. What it can do for the spirit of man is beyond description.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

4. “My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

5. “Government should stay the hell out of people’s business.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

6. “Forced integration is just as wrong as forced segregation.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

7. “I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws but to repeal them.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

8. “It is impossible to maintain freedom and order and justice without religious and moral sanctions.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

9. “Extremism in defense of Liberty is no vice.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

10. “I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

11. “There’s no greater service to this country than the defense of its freedom.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

12. “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 M. Goldwater

13. “The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

14. “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 M. Goldwater

15. “To disagree, one doesn’t have to be disagreeable.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

16. “I am frankly sick and tired of the political preachers telling me as a citizen that if I want to be a moral person, I must believe in A, B, C, and D. Just who do they think they are? And from where do they presume to claim the right to dictate their moral beliefs to me?”

— Barry M. Goldwater

17. “The Conservative knows that to regard man as part of an undifferentiated mass is to consign him to ultimate slavery.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

18. “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 M. Goldwater

19. “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 M. Goldwater

20. “The Republicans have a positive talent for self-destruction.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

21. “You don’t have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

22. “The constitution is an instrument, above all, for LIMITING the functions of government.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

23. “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 M. Goldwater

24. “We shall return to proven ways – not because they are old, but because they are true.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

25. “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 M. Goldwater

26. “Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

27. “American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

28. “But the framers were not visionaries. They knew that rules of government, however brilliantly calculated to cope with the imperfect nature of man, however carefully designed to avoid the pitfalls of power, would be no match for men who were determined to disregard them.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

29. “Everyone knows that gays have served honorably in the military since at least the time of Julius Caesar.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

30. “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 M. Goldwater

31. “Women are hard enough to handle now without giving them a gun!”

— Barry M. Goldwater

32. “I will offer a choice, not an echo.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

33. “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 M. Goldwater

34. “I think every good Christian ought to kick Falwell right in the ass.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

35. “A man from the west will fight over three things: water, women and gold, and usually in that order.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

36. “We cannot allow the American flag to be shot at anywhere on earth if we are to retain our respect and prestige.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

37. “In your heart you know he’s right.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

38. “I’m the most underdog underdog there is.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

39. “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 M. Goldwater

40. “I fear Washington and centralized government more than I do Moscow.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

41. “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 M. Goldwater

42. “The Conservative approach is nothing more or less than an attempt to apply the wisdom and experience and the revealed truths of the past to the problems of today. The challenge is not to find new or different truths, but to learn how to apply established truths to the problems of the contemporary world.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

43. “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 M. Goldwater

44. “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 M. Goldwater

Featured in: Strong Quotes

45. “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 M. Goldwater

46. “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 M. Goldwater

47. “You’ve got to forget about this civilian. Whenever you drop bombs, you’re going to hit civilians.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

48. “I have the unmitigated gall to think that I could lead men anywhere, business, politics or combat.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

49. “Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.”

— Barry M. Goldwater

50. “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 M. Goldwater