Biography

After some journalists garnered a quote from a psychiatrist saying he might be insane, he sued for libel. There is now the "Goldwater Principle", that you should not speculate about someone's mental health from a distance.

In his later years, he became estranged from his own party, which he saw as becoming influenced by the religious right - something he strongly opposed as a conservative libertarian.

During his 1964 presidential campaign, a television ad featuring a girl counting daisies, followed by a mushroom cloud, was broadcast. The commercial was designed to imply that he would start a nuclear war if he were elected president. Known as the "Daisy ad", the attack ad was viewed as a factor in his landslide defeat by incumbent Lyndon B. Johnson.

In 2006, his nephew, Donald Goldwater, sought the Republican nomination for Arizona governor, only to lose the nomination to Len Munsil (who eventually lost the gubernatorial election to Democratic incumbent Governor Janet Napolitano).

Retired from the U.S. Senate in 1986. John McCain held his former seat from 1987 until his death.

"I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!" - Acceptance speech to the Republican National Convention, 1964.

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.

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.

To disagree, one doesn't have to be disagreeable.

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