William Francis Buckley Quotes
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I grew up, as reported, in a large family of Catholics without even a decent ration of tentativeness among the lot of us about our religious faith.
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Friendship is strengthened by...that which ever so lightly elevates us from the trough of self-concern and self-devotion.
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The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional.
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We have got to accept Big Government for the duration-for neither an offensive nor a defensive war can be waged, given our present government skills, except through the instrument of a totalitarian bureaucracy within our shores. … And if they deem Soviet power a menace to our freedom (as I happen to), they will have to support large armies and air forces, atomic energy, central intelligence, war production boards, and the attendant centralization of power in Washington-even with Truman at the reins of it all.
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Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me.
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One must recently have lived on or close to a college campus to have a vivid intimation of what has happened. It is there that we see how a number of energetic social innovators, plugging their grand designs, succeeded over the years in capturing the liberal intellectual imagination. And since ideas rule the world, the ideologues, having won over the intellectual class, simply walked in and started to run things. Run just about everything. There never was an age of conformity quite like this one, or a camaraderie quite like the Liberals'.
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I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.
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Louis Kelso of San Francisco, a lawyer-economist, has for years felt that he has a radical answer to the problem.
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If only the left hated crime as much as they hated hate.
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Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them
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We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.
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Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
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Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority.
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It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for.
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Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common needle users, and on the buttock, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals.
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No one since the Garden of Eden - which the serpent forsook in order to run for higher office - has imputed to politicians great purity of motive.
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Not everything that is legal is reputable.
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You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters.
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All adventure is now reactionary.
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He [Cassius Clay] became a Black Muslim, which is a pseudo-religion for unbright neurotics who feel the need to hate all white people.
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The sobering anwer is yes - the white community is so entitled because ... it is the advanced race ... it is more important ... to affirm and live by civilized standards ... than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.
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A society is not 'free' merely because the freedoms the people are doing away with are those they voted at the last election to do without.
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What was wrong with communism wasn't aberrant leadership, it was communism.
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Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.