George F. Will > Quotes

“The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.”
― George F. Will

“Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”
― George Will

“There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.”
― George Will

“In the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.”
― George Will

“Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind’s noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand and love beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions.”
― George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball

“The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“National Review's premise was that conformity was especially egregious among the intellectuals, that herd of independent minds.”
― George will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“Because of demagogues, rhetoric has a tainted reputation in our time. However, rhetoric is central to democratic governance. It can fuse passion and persuasion, moving free people to freely choose what is noble.”
― George will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, "What you are doing is none of my business" and "What I am doing is none of your business.”
― George will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“if we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state.”
― George f. Will

“The almost-always-ghastly exclamation point has been lately compared to canned laughter.”
― George will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“The most capricious modern entitlement is not just Social Security but to self-esteem.”
― George will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“It is hard to remain iconoclastic when standing waist-deep in the shards of smashed icons.”
― George will, A Nice Little Place on the North Side: A History of Triumph, Mostly Defeat, and Incurable Hope at Wrigley Field

“We used to be a nation that celebrated people who got things done. Now we celebrate people who stop things getting done.”
― George F. Will

“Diplomacy without armaments is like music without instruments. – Frederick the Great”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“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 of God.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Matthew Arnold was a fastidious social critic and hence an accomplished complainer. When he died, an acquaintance said: "Poor Matt, he's going to Heaven, no doubt – but he won't like God.”
― George will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but, at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. His every day becomes more of adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him, that, in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. Alexis de Tocqueville”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“In this snug, over-safe corner of the world… we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous, untamed and streaming world.”
― George will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“Politics is always driven by competing worries.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry. A society in which the capacity for warm appreciation of excellence atrophies will find that its capacity for excellence diminishes. Happiness, too, diminishes as the appreciation of excellence diminishes. That is no small loss, least of all to a nation in which the pursuit of happiness was endorsed in the founding moment.”
― George F. Will, Men at Work

“Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce — yes, announce — that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by . . . liberals.”
― George Will

“The argument that a particular project will be "self-financing" is usually the first refuge of politicians defending the indefensible.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Institutions are lengthening shadows of strong individuals.”
― George Will, One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation

“In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. John Dos Passos”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“There is no hatred as corrupting as intellectual hatred.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“We have come a long way from sod huts and muddy boots to an economy that produces billions of dollars’ worth of soap. And we may be learning what Mark Twain meant: “Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run.”
― George F. Will, The Conservative Sensibility

“From visible habits we make inferences as to the invisible attributes of the soul. Therefore, statecraft is soulcraft.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric