Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. And… moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.

Barry Goldwater popularized this line during the 1964 U.S. presidential campaign, when he accepted the Republican nomination in San Francisco. The speech came amid intense Cold War anxieties and fierce domestic debate over civil rights, federal power, and the direction of American conservatism. Goldwater’s candidacy was often portrayed by opponents and much of the press as dangerously “extreme.” The phrase functioned as a defiant rebuttal: he reframed “extremism” as principled steadfastness when core values—liberty and justice—were at stake, and he rejected calls for “moderation” that, in his view, meant compromising those principles.

The quotation argues that moral and political evaluation depends on ends and principles, not on the temperature of one’s rhetoric or tactics. Goldwater claims that unwavering commitment (“extremism”) can be ethically justified when defending fundamental liberties, while “moderation” can be morally empty—or even complicit—if it dilutes the pursuit of justice. The line is also a rhetorical inversion: it turns a common criticism (extremism) into a badge of virtue and casts a celebrated civic ideal (moderation) as potentially cowardly. Its lasting significance lies in how it crystallizes a style of principled politics that prizes ideological clarity over compromise.

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!

1) “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice; moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
2) “Extremism in defense of liberty is no vice, and moderation in pursuit of justice is no virtue.”
3) “Extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice. Moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue.”