Barry Goldwater Quotes

The President was a responsibility beyond that of managing the government. He has a responsibility as a moral leader.

A return to first principles in a republic is sometimes caused by the simple virtues of one man. His good example has such an influence that the good men strive to imitate him, and the wicked are ashamed to lead a life so contrary to his example.

Virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government.

I think the greater responsibility, in terms of morality, is where leadership begins.

For children to take morality seriously they must be in the presence of adults who take morality seriously. And with their own eyes they must see adults take morality seriously.

We must have a clean role model at the top. Clearly this has not been the case.

If you are a model to the Empire, then constant virtue will not be wanting [to the people].

All Americans want our government to have a moral compass.

… keeper of the national conscience

We’re not here to bring politics to our morality, but to bring morality to our politics.

There's no crime in being a poor role model.

Actors have a social responsibility.

Divorced from ethics, leadership is reduced to management and politics to mere technique.

There is no man more dangerous, in a position of power, than he who refuses to accept as a working truth the idea that all a man does should make for rightness and soundness, that even the fixing of a tariff rate must be moral.

There is no shame in black athletes not wanting to be role models, but there should be shame when they don't behave like one. It's a free country and people can do whatever they want. But just because we can doesn't mean we should.

It's not what my job is about. I'm not out to make a political statement. I want to stand for something, but more by example.

Liberty without virtue would be no blessing to us.

We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

In my presidency I've been guided by what's right, not what's popular.

Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

No, we are not the master of the state, said King. We are not the servant of the state. We are the conscience of the state. The churches or the religious community should be, I think, the conscience of the state. We're not just service providers.

In civilized life, law floats in a sea of ethics.

It's healthy for government to be a kind of moral catalyst, using the bully pulpit of high office.

If you want young people to take right and wrong seriously, you must put them in the presence of people who take right and wrong seriously.

When government tries to serve as a parent or teacher or a moral guide, individuals may be tempted to discard their own sense of responsibility, to argue that only government must help people in need. If we've learned anything in the past quarter century, it is that we cannot federalize virtue.