George Will Quotes
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A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.
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I am opposed to term limits because if we did not have seasoned professionals, we would not have the good government that we have.
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World War II was the last government program that really worked.
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Concerning [postmodern] ideas, let us not mince words. The ideas are profoundly dangerous. They subvert our civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts accurately to portray a reality that exists independently of our perception or attitudes or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex or class.
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Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.
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I just got hooked on the radio, the voice of it all. It was my connection to metropolitan America, if you will. Sports, in particularly baseball then 'cause of its rich sediment of numbers, was one of the first things a young person could peg up with adults on - that is, you could know as much about Jimmy Fox as your father did.
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Liberalism is wrong because it doesn't work. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
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We have far more to fear from swift than from torpid government.
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Society flourishes when and only when its molecular unit, the family, flourishes. We know that lasting improvement comes only in the small increments produced by individuals adhering to the simple rules of life.
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So the Clinton-Gore era culminates with an election as stained as the blue dress, a Democratic chorus complaining that the Constitution should not be the controlling legal authority, and Clinton's understudy dispatching lawyers to litigate this: It depends on what the meaning of 'vote' is.
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Mitch McConnell, 72, is second only to Henry Clay as the state's most consequential public servant. McConnell's skills have been honed through five terms. He is, however - let us say the worst - not cuddly. National Review has said he has 'an owlish, tight-lipped public demeanor reminiscent of George Will.' Harsh. But true.
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Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates, and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a 'living Constitution.' They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for war-making.
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Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain.
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Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes.
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Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity.
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Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.
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Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction.
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Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate... Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis.
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Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.
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Wars do not always begin with an abrupt, cymbal-crash rupture of conditions properly characterized as peace. There can be almost seamlessly incremental transitions.
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On March 8 a poll showed Hart 9 points ahead of Reagan. So perhaps 60 million Americans, 55 million of whom had not heard of Hart a month ago, have suddenly decided thay want him to be leader of the free world. The public mind is not just soft wax, it's runny.
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All children find chaos congenial. Any unruliness, even by nature, advances the child's program of subverting authority.
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The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that.
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The best use of history is as an inoculation against radical expectations, and hence against embittering disappointments.