George Will Quotes

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

George Will

• Democracy
• Promise
• Politician

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Quotes to Explore

• Social Security is not just another government spending program. It is a promise from generation to generation.

  

  Hank Johnson
  • Government
  • Promise
  • Generation

• Democracy is a pathetic belief in the collective wisdom of individual ignorance.

  

  H. L. Mencken
  • Wisdom
  • Democracy
  • Ignorance

• The two million or so residents who live beneath the Heathrow flight path are accustomed to the noise. However, they are right to feel that any expansion would represent an unacceptable broken promise.

  

  Zac Goldsmith
  • Live
  • Path
  • Broken

• Is America truly a democracy? Has America ever been a democracy with the institution of slavery?

  

  Tatyana Ali
  • America
  • Democracy
  • Slavery

• From my intimate discussions with President Obama, it is evident that India figures significantly in American geo-political, economic and strategic thinking. India is the largest democracy in the world.

  

  Narendra Modi
  • World
  • Thinking
  • American

• Democracy is the road to socialism.

  

  Karl Marx
  • Democracy
  • Road
  • Socialism

• Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East.

  

  Jack Schwartz
  • Democracy
  • Israel
  • Middle

• We are a people trying not only to solve the problems of the present: unemployment, inflation... but we are attempting on a larger scale to fulfill the promise of America.

  

  Barbara Jordan
  • People
  • Trying
  • America

• Our brand of democracy is hard. But I can promise that a year from now, when I no longer hold this office, I'll be right there with you as a citizen - inspired by those voices of fairness and vision, of grit and good humor and kindness that have helped America travel so far.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Good
  • America
  • Democracy

• No party has a monopoly on wisdom. No democracy works without compromise. But when Governor Romney and his allies in Congress tell us we can somehow lower our deficit by spending trillions more on new tax breaks for the wealthy - well, you do the math. I refuse to go along with that. And as long as I'm President, I never will.

  

  Barack Obama
  • Long
  • Party
  • Wisdom

• Too many people expect wonders from democracy, when the most wonderful thing of all is just having it.

  

  Walter Winchell
  • People
  • Democracy
  • Wonderful

• 'The Sea Wolf' is the story of a man who believes only in brute force. He is so firm in belief in his own ideas that he despises all who disagree with him. He preaches the doctrine of intolerance. He flaunts the notion that democracy is anything but weakness.

  

  Ida Lupino
  • Man
  • Ideas
  • Democracy

• Our right to disagree is precious but fragile. The best way to protect and preserve it is to let the other side speak without demonizing them or destroying their right to be heard. Such civil exchanges are the heart beat of democracy - essential to keeping it alive.

  

  Madeleine M. Kunin
  • Heart
  • Best
  • Democracy

• Promise, large promise, is the soul of an advertisement.

  

  Samuel Johnson
  • Soul
  • Promise
  • Advertisement

• In Italy, for thirty years under the Borgias, they had warfare, terror, murder and bloodshed - they produced Michelangelo, Leonardo Da Vinci and the Renaissance. In Switzerland, they had brotherly love and five hundred years of democracy and peace, and what did they produce? The cuckoo clock!

  

  Orson Welles
  • Peace
  • Democracy

• Our democracy has been around far longer than European democracy.

  

  Hillary Clinton
  • Democracy

• I think God asks us to promise to replenish the planet and to pay 100% attention to our young so that they will develop character and a good conscience.

  

  Louis Gossett, Jr.
  • Good
  • God
  • Character

• If you are writing a thriller with violence in it, the ending must be violent. You are delivering a promise to your reader.

  

  Gayle Lynds
  • Writing
  • Violence
  • Promise

• I found a correlation between the spreading of democracy after the fall of the Berlin Wall and the rise in slavery. Now, as countries, former Communist countries, became so-called democratic, people started to be enslaved by their own countrymen.

  

  Loretta Napoleoni
  • People
  • Fall
  • Democracy

• A band is not a democracy: It's show business.

  

  James McBride
  • Business
  • Band
  • Democracy

• Then may we not fairly plead in reply that our true lover of knowledge naturally strives for truth, and is not content with common opinion, but soars with undimmed and unwearied passion till he grasps the essential nature of things with the mental faculty fitted to do so, that is, with the faculty which is akin to reality, and which approaches and unites with it, and begets intelligence and truth as children, and is only released from travail when it has thus reached knowledge and true life and satisfaction?

  

  Plato
  • Knowledge
  • Satisfaction
  • True Lover

• A brilliant treatment of the history of Purgatory in England and its survivals and echoes throughout Shakespeare's plays, above all Hamlet.

  

  Carol Zaleski
  • Treatment
  • Hamlet
  • Shakespeare

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

  

  George Will
  • Democracy
  • Promise
  • Politician