George Will Quotes

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.

Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness.

There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.

Americans complain a lot about the government and they voice a generalized suspicion of the government, but they constantly clammer for more of it.

What the federal government does basically is borrow money from people and mail it to people.

All I remember about my wedding day in 1967 is that the Cubs lost a double-header.

One radical free spirit nonconformist is pretty much like another.

The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.

Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.

It (baseball) has no clock, no ties and no Liberal intrusions into the organized progression.

Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?

Like a snail crossing a sidewalk, the Clinton Administration leaves a lengthening trail of slime, this time on America's national honor.

They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be acute Republicans.

If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone.

Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.

Football brings out the sociologist that lurks in some otherwise respectable citizens. They say football is a metaphor for America's sinfulness.

Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes

For Conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing.

I am opposed to term limits because if we did not have seasoned professionals, we would not have the good government that we have.

I don't think anyone has ever announced running for president that they want to change the Bill of Rights.

Since 1946, the Cubs have had two problems: They put too few runs on the scoreboard and the other guys put too many. So what is the new management improving? The scoreboard.

Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights.

The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory.

Few things are as stimulating as other people's calamities observed from a safe distance.

All politicians are to some extent salesmen.

As has been said, standards are always out of date - that is why we call them standards.

Revisiting the Revolutionary War is a bracing reminder that the fate of a continent, and the shape of the modern world, turned on the free choices of remarkably few Americans defying an empire.

Sports is the toy department of life.

Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.

Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain.

Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues.

The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, the United Nations is a disunited collection of regimes, many of which do not represent the nations they govern.

The almost erotic pleasure of spending money that others have earned and saved is one reason people put up with the tiresome aspects of political life.

The most important business of one generation is the raising of the next generation. Nothing else you do in life will be as deeply satisfying.

Money is time made tangible - the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner's time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom.

That is the crux of modern conservatism - government taking strong measures to foster the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for increased individual independence.

Even the continents drift.

Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.

Big government inevitably drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government.

Semicolons . . . signal, rather than shout, a relationship. . . . A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do."

Freedom is the silence of the law.

Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes.

Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.

[P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.

When a politician says, concerning an issue involving science, that the debate is over, you may be sure the debate is rolling on and not going swimmingly for his side.

The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government's size is at any moment, is the bare minimum neccessary to forestall intolerable suffering.

According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

The realistic way to reduce the amount of money in politics is to reduce the amount of politics in money -- the importance of government in allocating wealth and opportunity.

Each achieves one or both of two objectives — making liberals feel good about themselves and being good to liberal candidates.