William Francis Buckley Quotes
-
You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.
-
I had much more fun criticizing than praising.
-
I find it easier to believe in God than to believe Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.
-
It was rumored, in 1946, that the hangman in Nuremberg adjusted the nooses of some of the condemned to magnify the pain of suffocation. Such sadism was not called for then and is not called for now. But if fornication is wrong, there is no denying that it can bring pleasure. The death of Saddam Hussein at rope's end brings a pleasure that is undeniable, and absolutely chaste in its provenance.
-
The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana makes no sense.
-
I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.
-
I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition. I asked myself the other day, "Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?" I couldn't think of anyone.
-
Treatment is not now available for almost half of those who would benefit from it. Yet we are willing to build more and more jails in which to isolate drug users even though at one-seventh the cost of building and maintaining jail space and pursuing, detaining, and prosecuting the drug user, we could subsidize commensurately effective medical care and psychological treatment.
-
I catch fire and find the reserves of courage and assertiveness to speak up. When that happens I get quite carried away. My blood gets hot my brow wet I become unbearably and unconscionably sarcastic and bellicose I am girded for a total showdown.
-
Before there was Ronald Reagan there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry, there was National Review , and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind.
-
The majority of the senior class of Vassar does not desire my company and I must confess, having read specimens of their thought and sentiments, that I do not desire the company of the majority of the senior class of Vassar.
-
Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.
-
Socialize the individual's surplus and you socialize his spirit and creativeness.
-
One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed - different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.
-
As a businessman, Frank Lorenzo gives capitalism a bad name.
-
There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.
-
The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.
-
We love your adherence to democratic principles.
-
I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
-
Only government can cause inflation, preserve monopoly, and punish enterprise.
-
Some of my instincts are reprehensible.
-
Boredom is the deadliest poison.
-
Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.
-
A relatively small and eternally quarrelsome country in Western Europe, fountainhead of rationalist political manias, militarily impotent, historically inglorious during the past century, democratically bankrupt, Communist-infiltrated from top to bottom.