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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

“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

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

“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

“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

“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

“Speaking for George Will, on whose thinking I am world’s foremost authority, I say: not necessarily. The heavy hitters do have heavy responsibilities.”
― George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball

“The republican form of government rests on representation: The people do not decide issues, they decide who will decide. Who, that is, will conduct the deliberations that “refine and enlarge” public opinion (Madison, Federalist No. 10). This system of filtration is vitiated by a plebiscitary presidency, the occupant of which claims a direct, unmediated, almost mystical connection with “the people.”
― George F. Will

“He [Barry Goldwater] was called "the cheerful malcontent." It takes a rare and fine temperament to wed that adjective with that noun. His emotional equipoise was undisturbed by the loss of 44 states as a presidential nominee. Perhaps he sensed that he had won the future. We -- 27,178,188 of us -- who voted for him in 1964 believe he won, it just took 16 years to count the votes.”
― George F. Will

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

“Chemical cheating will be decisively routed when fans become properly repelled by it. They will recoil in disgust when they understand that athletes who are chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued.”
― George F. Will, Men at Work: The Craft of Baseball

“Politics is always driven by competing worries.”
― 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

“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

“Global warming is socialism by the back door. The whole point of global warming is that it's a rationalization for progressives to do what progressives want to do, which is concentrate more and more power in Washington, more and more Washington power in the executive branch, more and more executive branch power in independent czars and agencies to micromanage the lives of the American people -- our shower heads, our toilets, our bathtubs, our garden hoses. Everything becomes involved in the exigencies of rescuing the planet.”
― George F. Will

“Before the game, he [Vin Scully] waxed poetic about Wrigley Field:
She stands alone at the corner of Clark and Addison, this dowager queen, dressed in basic black and pearls, seventy-five years old, proud head held high and not a hair out of place, awaiting yet another date with destiny, another time for Mr. Right. She dreams as old ladies will of men gone long ago. Joe Tinker. Johnny Evers. Frank Chance. And of those of recent vintage like her man Ernie. And the Lion [Leo Durocher]. And Sweet Billy Williams. And she thinks wistfully of what might have been, and the pain is still fresh and new, and her eyes fill, her lips tremble, and she shakes her head ever so slightly. And then she sighs, pulls her shawl tightly around her frail shoulders, and thinks, This time, this time it will be better.”
― George F. Will, A Nice Little Place on the North Side: Wrigley Field at One Hundred