Moussaoui used his final public appearance to again "curse" the United States and shout "God Bless Osama bin Laden".
A day after a jury rejected execution for the 37-year-old Frenchman, he revelled in his courtroom finale, before he is silenced for ever in a Super Maximum Security prison in Colorado.
"Mr Moussaoui, you came here to be a martyr and die in a big bang of glory; but to quote the poet T.S. Eliot, instead, you will die with a whimper," Judge Leonie Brinkema told him.
"You will spend the rest of your life in prison and you will never again get to speak, and that is an appropriate and fair ending."
Judge Brinkema's admonishment seemed partly motivated by Moussaoui's declaration "I won" after he escaped a death sentence on Wednesday.
"In terms of winners and losers, it is pretty clear who won yesterday and who lost yesterday," the judge said.
Mocked testimony
When Moussaoui arrived for the 20-minute hearing, he was smiling broadly and flashing "V" for "victory" signs to the public benches.
He sat in his chair in the corner of the courtroom, as he was berated by relatives of September 11 victims invited to speak by Judge Brinkema.
"I hope you stay in that jail without seeing the sun, without seeing the sky, without contact with the world," said Rosemary Dillard, looking directly across the court at Moussaoui.
When he got his chance to speak, Moussaoui mocked the victims. "I have seen an amount of hypocrisy beyond any belief, your humanity is very selective humanity," he said.
"You don't want to hear, America. You will feel. We will come back another day," he declared angrily in an apparent warning of new terror attacks.
"God curse America, God save Osama bin Laden. You'll never get him," said Moussaoui.
As he was led from court, Moussaoui shouted his final public words. "I will see you before the end of George W. Bush," he bellowed towards the public benches, containing relatives of victims of the September 11 attacks.
When he got the chance to speak, Moussaoui mocked victims’ testimony.
"You say that we (Al-Qaeda) are a hate organisation, I say the CIA is a peace and love organisation," Moussaoui said.
Moussaoui had pleaded guilty to conspiring to hijack planes for Al-Qaeda and fly them into prominent US buildings.
He was detained in August 2001, but prosecutors had argued that his "lethal lies" while in detention had helped Al-Qaeda hijackers go ahead with the September 11 attacks unhindered.
The jury agreed in the first phase of the trial that Moussaoui had contributed toward the deaths and so was eligible for the death penalty.
But it did not come up with the unanimous verdict needed to recommend execution.
Analysts comment
Analysts say the life prison term is a fresh failure for the United States government in its legal battles over the global war on terrorism.
Analyst Lyle Denniston has written on the Scotusblog legal website the verdict must be counted as a major defeat for the Justice Department in the highest profile case to grow out of the war on terrorism.
Jonathan Turley a law professor at George Washington University says even if the jury had ordered the execution sought by prosecutors the prejudicial evidence and errors by the prosecution meant it would have been overturned by the Supreme Court.