I have little interest in streamlining government or making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size,' the Republican wrote. 'My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them.' Such words are standard bread-and-butter for members of today's Grand Old Party. And to whom might they belong? Ronald Reagan in 1980? Newt Gingrich in 1994? In fact, they came in 1960 from the pen of an Arizona senator, Barry Goldwater, a towering figure of American politics, who died last week at the age of 89.
Goldwater became best known for losing the 1964 presidential election to incumbent Democrat Lyndon Johnson in a landslide. It was a stunning defeat for the Republicans, one which was not to be relived until 1996, when Bob Dole lost to Bill Clinton.
It might sound strange that a politician - whose greatest claim to fame was an infamous loss - was granted epitaphs and obituaries usually reserved only for the men who make it to the White House. Barry Goldwater is being remembered not as a great achiever, but as a standard-bearer; a politician ahead of his time, without whom the rise to power of Mr Reagan and Mr Gingrich would have been markedly more difficult, if not inconceivable.
Goldwater was a conservative when conservatism was unfashionable, a maverick ideologue when the national mood was geared towards a liberal consensus. His firebrand rhetoric was judged too extreme even within his own party's establishment.
According to conservative ally and National Review founder William Buckley, he was 'the primary political figure in the 1960s. Around him flowered a number of ideas that galvanised in the 80s'.
But Goldwater is also being celebrated as the last giant from a bygone political age; a time when politicians could still say what they meant and lead with their heart, a time which seems distant from this Clintonian era of eternal polling and focus groups.