Skip to content
quotesby

I used to receive a hundred calls a year from people who wanted me to get into the Green Room at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, because that's where the Air Force stored all the material gathered on UFOs. I once asked Curtis LeMay if I could get in that room, and he just gave me holy hell. He said, 'Not only can't you get into it but don't you ever mention it to me again.' Now, with the millions of planets that we know are up there, it's hard for me to believe that ours is the only goddam one that has things that can think walking around on it. So when people tell me they've seen UFOs, I don't say they haven't. In fifteen thousand hours of flying, I've never seen one, but I've talked to pilots who have. I talked to an airline crew that swore up and down that an object came alongside of them one night, and before they could do anything it vanished. We lost a military pilot who went up to intercept strange lights and never came back. His airplane disappeared, too. I won't argue for or against.

Barry Goldwater#6

MilitaryScience

About this quote

What does it mean?
Goldwater discusses his interactions with military personnel regarding UFO storage and expresses open-mindedness about extraterrestrial life.
In plain terms
He notes restricted access to UFO docs but believes alien life might exist.
What can you take from it?
Remain open to evidence about extraterrestrial phenomena.

Where it applies

  • discussions on unidentified aerial phenomena
  • military secrets

Putting it to work

  • evaluating military claims

Questions to consider

  • Should UFO data be public?
  • What makes alien life plausible?

Another view

It relies on anecdotal pilot accounts without physical evidence.

More from Barry Goldwater

  1. On religious issues there can be little or no compromise. There is no position on which people are so immovable as their religious beliefs. There is no more po…

    Permalink to quote #5
  2. When you say 'radical right' today, I think of these moneymaking ventures by fellows like Pat Robertson and others who are trying to take the Republican Party …

    Permalink to quote #7
  3. My faith in the future rests squarely on the belief that man, if he doesn't first destroy himself, will find new answers in the universe, new technologies, new…

    Permalink to quote #4

Related quotes

  1. The criterion which we use to test the genuineness of apparent statements of fact is the criterion of verifiability. We say that a sentence is factually signif…

    Alfred AyerAlfred Ayer quote #1
  2. I often say that when you can measure what you are speaking about, and express it in numbers, you know something about it; but when you cannot express it in nu…

    Lord KelvinLord Kelvin quote #1
  3. Although the problem of transmuting chemical elements into each other is much older than a satisfactory definition of the very concept of chemical element, it …

    Enrico FermiEnrico Fermi quote #1