William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes & Sayings

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house. — William F. Buckley Jr.

[The] act of gratitude is nowadays is probably more often neglected than overdone. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said. — William F. Buckley Jr.

But how reassuring it was for us, you remember, every now and then ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"), to vibrate to the music of the very heartstrings of the Leader of the Free World who, to qualify convincingly as such, had after all to feel a total commitment to the Free World. — William F. Buckley Jr.

To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Nobody who's ever been to Gulag is a pacifist. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Bobby Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller are having a row, ostensibly over the plight of New York's mentally retarded, a loose definition of which would include everyone in New York who voted for Bobby Kennedy or Nelson Rockefeller. — William F. Buckley Jr.

All adventure is now reactionary. — William F. Buckley Jr.

My beloved Eudosia [a member of Buckley's household staff], who is Cuban, very large, quite old, and altogether superstitious, and speaks only a word or two of English (even though she has been with us for 19 years), is quite certain that the gentleman who raped the 16-year-old girl in New Caanan three years ago and escaped has successfully eluded the police only because of his resourceful determination to ravage Eudosia before he dies. Accordingly she demanded, and I gave her, a shotgun, into which I have inserted two empty shells. Still, Eudosia with blank cartridges is more formidable than Eugene McCarthy with The Bomb. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard. — William F. Buckley Jr.

One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Liberals don't care what you do so long as it's compulsory. — William F. Buckley Jr.

If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign, — William F. Buckley Jr.

Why should any country continue, forever, to be "great"? — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity). — William F. Buckley Jr.

The New York Times, whose editorial department sounds like Cotton Mather rewriting Eleanor Roosevelt ... — William F. Buckley Jr.

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

In the hands of a skillful indoctrinator, the average student not only thinks what the indoctrinator wants him to think ... but is altogether positive that he has arrived at his position by independent intellectual exertion. This man is outraged by the suggestion that he is the flesh-and-blood tribute to the success of his indoctrinators. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Mr. Rockefeller is due to entertain munificently at breakfast, and make his pitch. My advice to one invited guest was: Order caviar, and then say No. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Earlier this month the State Department gave the umpteenth performance of its popular play, Please Tread on Me, with Ceylon as guest star, and the usual cast. — William F. Buckley Jr.

But is God a Yale man? — William F. Buckley Jr.

Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them — William F. Buckley Jr.

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years. — William F. Buckley Jr.

What would happen if the Communists occupied the Sahara? Answer: Nothing - for 50 years. Then there would be a shortage of sand. — William F. Buckley Jr.

If Bach is not in Heaven, I am not going! — William F. Buckley Jr.

A capitalist is someone who derives a substantial share of his income from his equity in producing companies. On this scale the figures are discouraging. Approximately ninety percent of the capital of this country is owned by five or less percent of the American people. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Professor Galbraith is horrified by the number of Americans who have bought cars with tail fins on them, and I am horrified by the number of Americans who take seriously the proposals of Mr. Galbraith. — William F. Buckley Jr.

You know, I've spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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 in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Conservatism is the tacit acknowledgement that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us; that the crucial explorations have been undertaken, and that it is given to man to know what are the great truths that emerged from them. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase. — William F. Buckley Jr.

We find that in the absence of demonstrable truth, the best we can do is to exercise the greatest diligence, humility, insight, intelligence, and industry in trying to arrive at the nearest values to truth. I hope, of course, to argue convincingly that having done this, we have an inescapable duty to seek to inculcate others with these values. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Human progress is achieved by taking exact measurements. — William F. Buckley Jr.

France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers. — William F. Buckley Jr.

To Buckley, she embodied the worst of what in subsequent decades would be called political correctness: the mindless application to every issue of a platitudinous egalitarianism whose practical effect invariably is to expand the reach of totalitarianism. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Why does baloney avoid the grinder? — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

He was a conservative all right, but invariably he gave the impression that he was a conservative because he was surrounded by liberals; that he had been a revolutionist if that had been required in order to be socially disruptive. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me. — William F. Buckley Jr.

History is but the polemics of the victor. — William F. Buckley Jr.

When it is not possible to reason with holy warriors, it is necessary to immobilize them or crush them. — William F. Buckley Jr.

What was wrong with communism wasn't aberrant leadership, it was communism. — William F. Buckley Jr.

It seems to me that the idea traditionally defended of endeavoring to maintain existing ethnic balances simply doesn't work any more. — William F. Buckley Jr.

What yells out at the US public ... is the incandescent hypocrisy of so many people who, in the name of free speech, persecute its practitioners if their opinions are conservative. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Reagan is both too fatalistic and too modest to be a crudaser. He doesn't have that darkness around the eyes of a George McGovern. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I get satisfaction of three kinds. One is creating something, one is being paid for it and one is the feeling that I haven't just been sitting on my ass all afternoon. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Norman Mailer decocts matters of the first philosophical magnitude from an examination of his own ordure, and I am not talking about his books. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The police can't use clubs or gas or dogs. I suppose they will have to use poison ivy. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The obvious differences apart, Karl Marx was no more a reliable prophet than was the Reverend Jim Jones. Karl Marx was a genius, an uncannily resourceful manipulator of world history who shoved everything he knew, thought, and devised into a Ouija board from whose movements he decocted universal laws. He had his following, during the late phases of the Industrial Revolution. But he was discredited by historical experience longer ago than the Wizard of Oz: and still, great grown people sit around, declare themselves to be Marxists, and make excuses for Gulag and Afghanistan. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Dr. King's flouting of the law does not justify the flouting by others of the law, but it is a terrifying thought that, most likely, the cretin who leveled his rifle on the head of Martin Luther King, may have absorbed the talk, so freely available, about the supremacy of the individual conscience, such talk as Martin Luther King, God rest his soul, had so widely, and so indiscriminately, made. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful. — William F. Buckley Jr.

They [Theodore White and Lou Harris] took turns weeping, and finally concluded that Rockefeller got the votes of everyone in California who is a Negro, a Jew, a Mexican, and a college graduate, while Goldwater got the votes of every millionaire. Which certainly makes California the land of opportunity. — William F. Buckley Jr.

There is a man who has won the decathlon of human existence."* — William F. Buckley Jr.

There is no greater paradox in the cosmos," the deceased had written, "than the apparent contradiction of our helplessness ('without me, you can do nothing') alongside God's 'helplessness.' Oh, I know, God is all-powerful, and so on; but he cannot undo what he has done, and what he once did was to make men free. This means that he 'needs' us in order to get us to Heaven as his lovers, and in order to do his will in the world. All we have to do in order to frustrate those wishes - to render God 'helpless' - is to say No. But God is not helpless, really, because he has mercy - himself. And what mercy does is convert, change our hearts. Which God never stops trying to do until we are dead. This means continued suffering for him, which is what Christ is all about." Young — William F. Buckley Jr.

I will not cede more power to the state. I will not willingly cede more power to anyone, not to the state, not to General Motors, not to the CIO. I will hoard my power like a miser, resisting every effort to drain it away from me. I will then use my power, as I see fit. 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 arived at yesterday at the voting booth. That is a program of sorts, is it not? It is certainly program enough to keep conservatives busy, and Liberals at bay. And the nation free. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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'. — William F. Buckley Jr.

It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except the intended target! — William F. Buckley Jr.

I had much more fun criticizing than praising. — William F. Buckley Jr.

We are, always, reminded of the old saw: What would happen if the Soviet Union took over the Sahara Desert? Answer: Nothing for 50 years. After that there would be a shortage of sand. — William F. Buckley Jr.

All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Now it is one thing to say I say it that people shouldn't consume psychoactive drugs. It is entirely something else to condone marijuana laws, the application of which resulted, in 1995, in the arrest of 588,963 Americans. Why are we so afraid to inform ourselves on the question? — William F. Buckley Jr.

for December 19 and for a day or two bracketing the — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop! — William F. Buckley Jr.

Ladies and Gentlemen, we deem it the central revelation of Western experience that man cannot ineradicably stain himself, for the wells of regeneration are infinitely deep. No temple has ever been so profaned that it cannot be purified; no man is ever truly lost; no nation is irrevocably dishonored. Khrushchev cannot take permanent advantage of our temporary disadvantage, for it is the West he is fighting. And in the West there lie, however encysted, the ultimate resources, which are moral in nature. Khrushchev is not aware that the gates of hell shall not prevail against us. Even out of the depths of despair, we take heart in the knowledge that it cannot matter how deep we fall, for there is always hope. In the end, we will bury him. — William F. Buckley Jr.

We view our atomic arsenal as proudly and as devotedly as any pioneer ever viewed his flintlock hanging over the mantel as his children slept, and dreamed. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Only government can cause inflation, preserve monopoly, and punish enterprise. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The principal sponsors of the terrorists are not religious fanatics. "Palestine's Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and Syria's Assad family have made themselves the icons of Islamism despite the fact that they are well-known atheists who live un-Muslim lives and have persecuted unto death the Muslim movements in their countries." — William F. Buckley Jr.

We love your adherence to democratic principles. — William F. Buckley Jr.

If only the left hated crime as much as they hated hate. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Birch fallacy is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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. — William F. Buckley Jr.

[D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.
-William F Buckley — William F. Buckley Jr.

It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Christianity finds all its doctrines stated in the Bible, and Christianity denies no part, nor attempts to add anything to the Word of God. — William F. Buckley Jr.