I.B. George Quotes

The future is usually just like the past- right up to the moment when it isn't.

The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction - that 'Europe' has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

Most presidents come to Washington bright as freshly minted dimes and leave much diminished.

Stalin's henchman Molotov, 96, died old and in bed, a privilege he helped to deny to millions.

Baseball is Heaven's gift to mortals.

The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.

Americans are conservative. What they want to conserve is the New Deal.

It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country - and indeed the world - has yet seen.

A decrease in the quantity of legislation generally means an increase in the quality of life.

I think if you'd had television cameras at Gettysburg, this would be two nations today. People would not have put up with that carnage if they saw it up close. We'd have elected McClellan in 1864.

There is an aura of changelessness to sport. There is the flux of competition, but it occurs within the ordering confinement of clear rules.

The education of this president [Obama] is a protracted and often amusing process . . . as he continues to alight upon the obvious with a sense of profound and original discovery.

We have far more to fear from swift than from torpid government.

Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election.

A surreal and ultimately disgusting facet of the Iraq fiasco is the lag between when a fact becomes obvious and when the fiasco's architects acknowledge that fact.

Man is messy, but any creature that can create space vehicles can probably cope.

Hart is still like that little tub of vaguely milklike gunk that comes with airline coffee. It is labeled a "nondairy" product. Fine: we know what is is non, but what is it?

Wars do not always begin with an abrupt, cymbal-crash rupture of conditions properly characterized as peace. There can be almost seamlessly incremental transitions.

Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity.

Overcriminalization has become a national plague.

Geology has joined biology in lowering mankind's self-esteem. Geology suggests how mankind's existence is contingent upon the geological consent of the planet.

Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turns human beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.

When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it - after the 16th Amendment is repealed.

The best use of history is as an inoculation against radical expectations, and hence against embittering disappointments.

Baseball's rich in wonderful statistics, but it's hard to find one more beautiful than Stan Musial's hitting record. He didn't care where he was, he just hit.

Only in football is long-term injury the result not of accidents but of the game played properly.

Twenty years ago rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for IBM.

Disparagement of television is second only to watching television as an American pastime.

National security rests on the credible threat of a form of warfare universally condemned since the Dark Ages, the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants.

Term limits would make Congress bolder, more independent, and less risk-averse.

Hillary Clinton hasn't created a job.

The Pride of ancestry increases in the ratio of distance.

Books of entertainment first led Adam Clarke to believe in a spiritual world.

It is not observed in history that families improve with time.

No leader, however great a personality he may be, is as important to a people as their own intellectual development.

A literary movement: five or six people who live in the same town and hate each other.

Whiskey: a torchligh procession marching down your throat.

We are tired who follow after fantasy and truth that flies: You with only look and laughter stain our hearts with richest dyes.

In my day, everything came from my belly button and seat of the pants. Today, everything is done from research.

I didn't start playing piano until I was 18.

Baseball was my main sport, but I peaked when I reached high school and so my baseball career stopped.

Hang sorrow! care will kill a cat,And therefore let 's be merry.

Wait around and wait around and pretty soon you won't be around

The rationality of our universe is best suggested by the fact that we can discover more about it from any starting point, as if it were a fabric that will unravel from any thread.

Conceit and confidence are both of them cheats; the first always imposes on itself, the second frequently deceives others too.

Having purpose and vision during retirement is one of the most important determinants of mental, social, spiritual, and physical well-being in later life.

People who practise a religion have been found to be happier, healthier and less stressed than those who don't.

Property in land is as indefensible as property in man.

That alone is wise which is just; that alone is enduring which is right.

Abolish all taxation save that upon land values.