Talk:Barry Goldwater

Latest comment: 9 years ago by NCdave

Just moving some quotes from the Wikipedia Goldwater page. I didn't verify their accuracy. I also put some quotes into their proper alphabetical order. The one about Falwell looks suspect to me.--68.6.35.158 03:08, 2 December 2005 (UTC)Reply


here's a url from The Arizona Republic that can offer a bit of sourcing for the Goldwater quotes. I have not the time, nor the inclination for it.


The quote that is attributed to a speech in the Senate on Sept. 21 1981 is common on the internet and is usually attributed, if at all, to the COngressional Record. However, my extensive search of the CR does not turn up the quote (he made speeches with similiar ideas, hwoever, on the 11th and 24th of that month). At least one other person (see the link to the footnote on his fears about religious extrmeism in the Goldwater article) also searched in the CR and failed to find it. Richard Dawkins quotes it in The God Delusion with just an attribution ot the CR for the date, no page number, and I have a querry in to him to see if can provide further information.


Clarification edit

"It's political Daddyism and it's as old as demagogues and despotism." There is no clarification as to what "it's" referring to? I don't know how the tags work on here, so i couldn't tag it.

But can someone check this out? Lihaas 13:23, 6 October 2008 (UTC)Reply

I am new here, and joined specifically to answer this question. I hope my answer is still relevant.
Goldwater said it during the campaign about LBJ. It is sourced in Time Magazine's November 1963 article entitled "Nation: The Underdog Underdog."

The FULL quote is:

"It is a fact that Lyndon Johnson and his curious crew seem to believe that progress in this country is best served simply and directly through the ever-expanding gift power of the everlastingly growing Federal Government. One thing we all know, and I assure you I do: that's a much easier way to get votes than my way. It always has been. It's political Daddyism, and it's as old as demagogues and despotism."

I sure hope that helps! -- Mergatroid.

Thanks for the note. The full quote, with sourcing, has now been added to the article. ~ Kalki (talk · contributions) 19:10, 28 August 2010 (UTC)Reply

Unsourced edit

Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable, precise and verifiable source for any quote on this list please move it to Barry Goldwater. --Antiquary 18:28, 8 May 2009 (UTC)Reply

  • A liberal is a man too broadminded to take his own side in a quarrel.
  • After one of his 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.
  • American business has just forgotten the importance of selling.
  • 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.
  • For the past twenty-five years the apostles of the welfare state, some Republicans, some Democrat, have been busy transforming that stern old gentleman with the top hat, the cutaway coat, the red, white, and blue trousers, from a symbol of dignity and freedom and justice for all men, into a national wet nurse, dispensing a cockeyed kind of patent medcine labeled "something for nothing," passing out the soothing syrup and rattles and pacifiers for grateful votes on election day.
  • Hubert Humphrey talks so fast that listening to him is like trying to read Playboy magazine with your wife turning the pages.
  • I became convinced the isolationist mood of the country after World War I, not the harsh terms of the Treaty of Versailles, had made World War II inevitable. If we had maintained our military superiority throughout the twenties and thirties, President Roosevelt could have warned Hitler not to invade any neutral countries, and that warning would have been heeded.
  • I don't think there was any Reagan revolution. This country is based, its economy is based, on free enterprise. The government's based on a constitutional democracy. And all Reagan did was to continue what Harry Truman did and George Washington started.
  • I will offer a choice, not an echo.
  • 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.
  • I wouldn't trust Nixon from here to that phone.
  • If everybody in this town connected with politics had to leave town because of chasing women and drinking, you would have no government.
  • It's a great country, where anybody can grow up to be president... except me.
  • 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.
  • Politics is the art of achieving the maximum amount of freedom for individuals that is consistent with the maintenance of social order.
  • 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.
  • Sex and politics are a lot alike. You don't have to be good at them to enjoy them.
  • The income tax created more criminals than any other single act of government.
  • The big thing is to make this country, along with every other country in the world with a few exceptions, 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. And that's what brings me into it.
  • The world will not greet you with open arms, but with a clenched fist.
    • Speaking as a Phoenix, Arizona city councilman to the 1950 graduating class at the segregated Carver High School
  • Throughout history civilian populations and political rulers have talked of peace. We have never been free of war. The soldier, whose profession is war, understands that peace must be enforced by superior military might. The certainty of defeat is the only effective deterrent we can use to maintain peace. Furthermore, we can be strong without being aggressive.
  • To disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable.
  • To insist on strength is not war-mongering. It is peace-mongering.
  • When I'm not a politician, I'll be dead.
  • You don't have to be straight to be in the military; you just have to be able to shoot straight.
  • Winning isn't everything. Some things, like loyalty to friends or lasting principle, are more important.

Money Masters edit

The quote from "Money Masters" seems dubious. There have been claims that some of the quotes in the video version are fakes. Does anyone have more information on this?Chip.berlet (talk) 02:38, 16 June 2012 (UTC)Reply

That quote is not dubious, that is real. You can find that quote in his book "With No Apologies".

http://books.google.hu/books?hl=hu&id=rz53AAAAMAAJ&q=operates+outside#search_anchor

Is John Dean's book a reliable source? edit

This quote comes solely from John Dean's 2006 book. It is supposedly based on Mr. Dean's recollection of a 1994 telephone conversation with Mr. Goldwater:

  • Mark my word, if and when these preachers get control of the [Republican] party, and they're sure trying to do so, it's going to be a terrible damn problem. Frankly, these people frighten me. Politics and governing demand compromise. But these Christians believe they are acting in the name of God, so they can't and won't compromise. I know, I've tried to deal with them. Said in November 1994, as quoted in John Dean, Conservatives Without Conscience (2006)

Mr. Goldwater wrote quite a few books and articles, but it does not appear that he ever wrote anything like this quote. So the only evidence we have for it is Mr. Dean's claim to have recalled the conversation.

A recollection of a supposed private phone conversation, recounted by a convicted felon & disbarred lawyer for the first time twelve years later, and eight years after Mr. Goldwater's death, seems very far from being a reliable source. In the absence of corroboration, I think this supposed quote is unreliable and should be deleted. NCdave (talk) 00:20, 13 May 2014 (UTC)Reply

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