George F. Will Quotes & Sayings

The State of the Union has become, under presidents of both parties, a political pep rally degrading to everyone. The judiciary and uniformed military should never attend. And Congress, by hosting a spectacle so monarchical in structure (which is why Thomas Jefferson sent his thoughts to Congress in writing) deepens the diminishment of the legislative branch as a mostly reactive servant of an overbearing executive. — George F. Will

In war the moral is to the material as three to one. Napoleon — George F. Will

Bushism is Reaganism minus the passion for freedom. — George F. Will

It is hard to remain iconoclastic when standing waist-deep in the shards of smashed icons. — George F. Will

In the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it. — George F. Will

When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but, at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. His every day becomes more of adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him, that, in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. Alexis de Tocqueville — George F. Will

The almost-always-ghastly exclamation point has been lately compared to canned laughter. — George F. Will

Behavior was better when cinemas were opulent. — George F. Will

He was one of the fortunate few for whom there simply was no discernible line between work and play, between creation and recreation. — George F. Will

Speaking for George Will, on whose thinking I am world's foremost authority, I say: not necessarily. The heavy hitters do have heavy responsibilities. — George F. Will

The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect. — George F. Will

Author complains about the further submergence of irrecoverable history into a perpetually churned present. — George F. Will

The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof. — George F. Will

Because of demagogues, rhetoric has a tainted reputation in our time. However, rhetoric is central to democratic governance. It can fuse passion and persuasion, moving free people to freely choose what is noble. — George F. Will

Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by ... liberals. — George F. Will

Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day. — George F. Will

Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, "What you are doing is none of my business" and "What I am doing is none of your business. — George F. Will

Talk about presidents "taking" the country hither and yon is part of the foam of presidential elections. — George F. Will

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. — George F. Will

The argument that a particular project will be "self-financing" is usually the first refuge of politicians defending the indefensible. — George F. Will

If we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state. — George F. Will

Sex education in the modern manner has been well-described as plumbing for hedonists. — George F. Will

But one thing led to another, as things have a way of doing, and in 1948, when I was still not as discerning as one should be when making life-shaping decisions, I became a Cub fan. The Catholic Church thinks seven-year-olds have reached an age of reasoning. The church might want to rethink that. — George F. Will

The republican form of government rests on representation: The people do not decide issues, they decide who will decide. Who, that is, will conduct the deliberations that "refine and enlarge" public opinion (Madison, Federalist No. 10). This system of filtration is vitiated by a plebiscitary presidency, the occupant of which claims a direct, unmediated, almost mystical connection with "the people. — George F. Will

Society is a crucible of character formation. — George F. Will

Our hatred of government is not caused mainly by government's goals, whatever their wisdom, but by government's techniques. Philip Howard — George F. Will

We used to be a nation that celebrated people who got things done. Now we celebrate people who stop things getting done. — George F. Will

In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God. — George F. Will

There is no hatred as corrupting as intellectual hatred. — George F. Will

Government could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things. — George F. Will

Avoidance of lunacy is an insufficient agenda.
-George Will on Ronald Reagan, 3-6-1987 — George F. Will

There are no final words in science. But there you have the deeply anti-scientific temper of the global warming advocacy groups: Final words. — George F. Will

The most capricious modern entitlement is not just Social Security but to self-esteem. — George F. Will

Sandel hankers for the muscular debates of yesteryear, when government was not big but had bigger ambitions than today's bland Leviathan has. — George F. Will

There is nothing quite like a dose of unvarnished history for inoculating people against the tendency to indict the present for failing to measure up to a sentimental notion of the past. — George F. Will

Politics is always driven by competing worries. — George F. Will

In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. John Dos Passos — George F. Will

There is an elegant memorial in Washington to Jefferson, but none to Hamilton. However, if you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government. — George F. Will

Time was when much of lawyering consisted (according to turn-of-the-century lawyer and statesman Elihu Root) in telling would-be clients that they are damned fool's, and should stop. — George F. Will

Global warming is a religion in the sense that it's a series of propositions that can't be refuted. It's very ironic that the global warming alarmists say, "We are the real defenders of science," and then they adopt the absolute reverse of the scientific attitude, which is openness to evidence. You cannot refute what they say. — George F. Will

The columnist gives these words to the longings of an 11-year-old he meets with Tourette's syndrome: Wisdom is encoded in our common language. We all have, to some extent, a complex, sometimes adversarial, relationship with our physical selves. And I more than most people know that it is correct to say,'I have a body.' There is my body, and then there is ME, trying to make it behave. — George F. Will

Coarseness occurs in a land where platitude inflames this sense of entitlement to more of almost everything, but less of manners and taste, with their irritating intimations of authority and hierarchy. — George F. Will

Law, rather than harnessing the passions, is increasingly pressed into their service. — George F. Will

A society with a crabbed spirit and a cynical urge to discount and devalue will find that one day when it needs to draw upon the reservoirs of excellence, the reservoirs have run dry. A society in which the capacity for warm appreciation of excellence atrophies will find that its capacity for excellence diminishes. Happiness, too, diminishes as the appreciation of excellence diminishes. That is no small loss, least of all to a nation in which the pursuit of happiness was endorsed in the founding moment. — George F. Will

Sport does not just build character, it reveals it. — George F. Will

Television news is akin to audible wallpaper. — George F. Will

Institutions are lengthening shadows of strong individuals. — George F. Will

Government breeds more government, and a lobbying infrastructure to defend itself. — George F. Will

Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like. — George F. Will

It is a distinctive American genius, this ability to transmute subversion into a marketable commodity. — George F. Will

Lacking an articulable defense of the cultural values under siege, he became a vessel of smoldering animosities. — George F. Will

Who teaches young people to be so exquisitely sensitive to perceived slights, so ready to read affronts into routine events in everyday life? Their teachers no doubt. — George F. Will

Economics has accurately been called the science of the single instance. — George F. Will

National Review's premise was that conformity was especially egregious among the intellectuals, that herd of independent minds. — George F. Will

Nothing is so irretrievably lost to a society as the sense of fear it felt about a grave danger that was subsequently coped with. — George F. Will

In this snug, over-safe corner of the world ... we may realize that our comfortable routine is no eternal necessity of things, but merely a little space of calm in the midst of the tempestuous, untamed and streaming world. — George F. Will

People who have nothing much in mind for next week speak instead about the next century or millennium. — George F. Will

Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings. — George F. Will

In this age of 'whatever,' Americans are becoming slaves to the new tyranny of nonchalance. James Morris — George F. Will

Get evangelical Christian made them receptive to the possibility of redemption in the here and now. — George F. Will

Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving contemplation of worthy things, such as beauty and courage. By witnessing physical grace, the soul comes to understand and love beauty. Seeing people compete courageously and fairly helps emancipate the individual by educating his passions. — George F. Will

Enough anecdotes make a pattern. — George F. Will

Global warming is socialism by the back door. The whole point of global warming is that it's a rationalization for progressives to do what progressives want to do, which is concentrate more and more power in Washington, more and more Washington power in the executive branch, more and more executive branch power in independent czars and agencies to micromanage the lives of the American people -- our shower heads, our toilets, our bathtubs, our garden hoses. Everything becomes involved in the exigencies of rescuing the planet. — George F. Will

Chemical cheating will be decisively routed when fans become properly repelled by it. They will recoil in disgust when they understand that athletes who are chemically propelled to victory do not merely overvalue winning, they misunderstand why winning is properly valued. — George F. Will

Washington DC is happiest when in indignation overdrive. — George F. Will

He [Barry Goldwater] was called "the cheerful malcontent." It takes a rare and fine temperament to wed that adjective with that noun. His emotional equipoise was undisturbed by the loss of 44 states as a presidential nominee. Perhaps he sensed that he had won the future. We
27,178,188 of us
who voted for him in 1964 believe he won, it just took 16 years to count the votes. — George F. Will

Soothing assumptions about the good faith and shared interests of antagonists are natural to democracy, as is the desire to spend money on things other than defense. Getting a democracy to do what does not come naturally requires leadership. — George F. Will

From visible habits we make inferences as to the invisible attributes of the soul. Therefore, statecraft is soulcraft. — George F. Will