George F. Will

Quotes

• “The columnist gives these words to the longings of an 11-year-old he meets with Tourette's syndrome: "Wisdom is encoded ...”
• “Gifted teachers master the patience required for the unending business of transmitting civilization down the generations...”
• “if we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incom...”
• “A cardinal tenet of conservatism is that social inertia is – and ought to be – strong. It discourages and, if necessary,...”
• “In this snug, over-safe corner of the world… we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of thin...”
• “In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with gener...”
• “Coarseness occurs in a land where platitude inflames this sense of entitlement to more of almost everything, but less of...”
• “Matthew Arnold was a fastidious social critic and hence an accomplished complainer. When he died, an acquaintance said: ...”
• “There is nothing quite like a dose of unvarnished history for inoculating people against the tendency to indict the pres...”
• “Time was when much of lawyering consisted (according to turn-of-the-century lawyer and statesman Elihu Root) in "telling...”
• “Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, "What you are doing is none of my business...”
• “Who teaches young people to be so exquisitely sensitive to perceived slights, so ready to read affronts into routine eve...”
• “Our hatred of government is not caused mainly by government's goals, whatever their wisdom, but by government's techniqu...”
• “He was one of the fortunate few for whom there simply was no discernible line between work and play, between creation an...”
• “National Review's premise was that conformity was especially egregious among the intellectuals, that herd of independent...”
• “There may be arrogance – and the laziness of someone who is indefatigable when doing what he enjoys, but only when doing...”
• “In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent o...”
• “From visible habits we make inferences as to the invisible attributes of the soul. Therefore, statecraft is soulcraft.”
• “The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect.”
• “Lacking an articulable defense of the cultural values under siege, he became a vessel of smoldering animosities.”
• “Author complains about "the further submergence of irrecoverable history into a perpetually churned present.”
• “Football combines the two worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”
• “In this age of 'whatever,' Americans are becoming slaves to the new tyranny of nonchalance. " James Morris”
• “Government could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things.”
• “Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day.”
• “The most capricious modern entitlement is not just Social Security but to self-esteem.”
• “Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like.”
• “Sex education in the modern manner has been well-described as plumbing for hedonists.”
• “Law, rather than harnessing the passions, is increasingly pressed into their service.”
• “Economics has accurately been called the science of the single instance.”
• “In war the moral is to the material as three to one. Napoleon”
• “Institutions are lengthening shadows of strong individuals.”
• “There is no hatred as corrupting as intellectual hatred.”
• “Washington DC is happiest when in indignation overdrive.”
• “Politics is always driven by competing worries.”
• “Behavior was better when cinemas were opulent.”
• “Television news is akin to audible wallpaper.”
• “Enough anecdotes make a pattern.”