But I am here concerned not so much by the abandonment of States’ Rights by the national Democratic Party – an event that occurred some years ago when that party was captured by the Socialist ideologues in and about the labor movement – as by the unmistakable tendency of the Republican Party to adopt the same course.

— Barry M. Goldwater

Barry M. Goldwater Quotes

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 M. Goldwater

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

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

— Barry M. Goldwater

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

— Barry M. Goldwater

The only summit meeting that can succeed is the one that does not take place.

— Barry M. Goldwater

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

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

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 M. Goldwater

Throughout history, government has proved to be the chief instrument for thwarting man’s liberty. Government represents power in the hands of some men to control and regulate the lives of other men. And power, as Lord Acton said, corrupts men. “Absolute power,” he added, “corrupts absolutely.

— Barry M. Goldwater

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

Any government which can promise you everything you want can also take away everything you have.

— Barry M. Goldwater

Freedom of association is one of the natural rights of man. Clearly, therefore, it should also be a “civil” right. Right-to-work laws derive from the natural law: they are simply an attempt to give freedom of association the added protection of civil law. I.

— Barry M. Goldwater

Let us henceforth make war on all monopolies – whether corporate or union. The enemy of freedom is unrestrained power, and the champions of freedom will fight against the concentration of power wherever they find it.

— Barry M. Goldwater

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

Here we have, by prominent spokesmen of both political parties, an unqualified repudiation of the principle of limited government. There is no reference by either of them to the Constitution, or any attempt to define the legitimate functions of government. The government can do whatever needs to be done; note, too, the implicit but necessary assumption that it is the government itself that determines what needs to be done.

— Barry M. Goldwater

Graft and corruption are symptoms of the illness that besets the labor movement, not the cause of it. The cause is the enormous economic and political power now concentrated in the hands of union leaders.

— Barry M. Goldwater

The Conservative believes that man is, in part, an economic, an animal creature; but that he is also a spiritual creature with spiritual needs and spiritual desires. What is more, these needs and desires reflect the superior side of man’s nature, and thus take precedence over his economic wants.

— Barry M. Goldwater

The same reasons apply to unions. Industry-wide price-fixing causes economic dislocations? So does industry-wide wage-fixing. A wage that is appropriate in one part of the country may not be in another area where economic conditions are very different. Corporate monopolies impair the operation of the free market, and thus injure the consuming public. So do union monopolies.

— Barry M. Goldwater

Thus, for the American Conservative, there is no difficulty in identifying the day’s overriding political challenge: it is to preserve and extend freedom.

— Barry M. Goldwater

But I am here concerned not so much by the abandonment of States’ Rights by the national Democratic Party – an event that occurred some years ago when that party was captured by the Socialist ideologues in and about the labor movement – as by the unmistakable tendency of the Republican Party to adopt the same course.

— Barry M. Goldwater
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