William F Buckley Quotes & Sayings

I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University. — 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.

When Gore Vidal was coming up, there were three major channels, and he could count on a big audience when he debated someone like William F. Buckley on TV. — Jay Parini

To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Louis Kelso of San Francisco, a lawyer-economist, has for years felt that he has a radical answer to the problem. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could. — 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.

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.

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.

I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University. — 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.

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.

Old ladies photographed by CBS who announced that they would die of malnutrition if Reagan's bill were passed could probably have saved themselves their impending penury by the simple device of applying to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for scale every time they were featured by Dan Rather or whoever. — William F. Buckley Jr.

I hope that, by this point, you're feeling a little less intimidated by the meanies, because I've got some bad news: Meanies come in many forms, not just human. They can be not only animal, but also mineral. In rare cases, they can even be vegetable, but we can talk about William F. Buckley some other time. — June Casagrande

There are some writers who sweep us along so strongly in their current of energy--Normal mailer, Tom Wolfe, Toni Morrison, William F. Buckley, Jr., Hunter Thompson, David Foster Wallace, Dave Eggers--that we assume that when they go to work the words just flow. Nobody thinks of the effort they made every morning to turn on the switch. You also have to turn on the switch. Nobody is going to do it for you. — William Zinsser

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.

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

Not everything that is legal is reputable. — 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.

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.

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

I've always believed that conservatism is the politics of reality, and that reality ultimately asserts itself in a reasonably free society, in behalf of the conservative position. — William F. Buckley Jr.

One doesn't read Jane Austen; one re-reads Jane Austen. — 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.

How can one deduce the cause of "Hamlet" or "Saint Matthew's Passion"? What is the cause of inspiration? — William F. Buckley Jr.

Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Socialize the individual's surplus and you socialize his spirit and creativeness ... — 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.

Conservatism is the politics of reality — William F. Buckley Jr.

If he was, somehow at the margin deficient, it was because the country did not rise to ask of him the performance of a thunderbolt. He gave what he was asked to give. And he leaves us (or "will leave") if not exactly bereft, lonely; lonely for the quintessential American. END. — 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.

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.

Even President Reagan couldn't understand him. During an early briefing Casey delivered to the national security cabinet, Reagan slipped Vice President Bush a note: "Did you understand a word he said?" Reagan later told William F. Buckley, "My problem with Bill was that I didn't understand him at meetings. Now, you can ask a person to repeat himself once. You can ask him twice. But you can't ask him a third time. You start to sound rude. So I'd just nod my head, but I didn't know what he was actually saying."
Such was the dialogue for six years between the president and his intelligence chief in a nuclear-armed nation running secret wars on four continents. — Steve Coll

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.

In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic. — Malcolm Gladwell

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand) — 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.

William F. Buckley, Jr. does not speak so much as exhale, but he exhales polysyllabically, and the results are remarkable. — Edwin Newman

Boredom is the deadliest poison. — William F. Buckley Jr.

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

Everything I do and say and the way I do and say it annoys me. — 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.

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. — 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.

William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others. — Dick Cavett

I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son. — Christopher Buckley

It is widely known that whenever Senator Johnson feels the urge to act the statesman at the cost of a little political capital," WFB wrote in June 1958, "he lies down until he gets over it. — 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.

I do not, in short, myself believe it is in the least bit undignified to confess to having been critically influenced in one's thinking by a teacher, or a faculty, or a book; but the accent these days is so strong on atomistic intellectual independence that to suggest such a thing is, as I have noted, highly inflammatory. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition. — 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 find it easier to believe in God than to believe Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop. — 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.

The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional. — William F. Buckley Jr.

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive. — 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.

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

If I were to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - which I think it's fairly safe to say is not going to happen - I would still expect the headline on my obituary to read: 'Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr., is dead at 78.' — Christopher Buckley

Some of my instincts are reprehensible. — 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.

The traces to the East haven been broken, the Republican party will never again be dominated by the editorial writers for the New York Herald Tribune. Free at last. — 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.

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

Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square. — William F. Buckley Jr.

The socialized state is to justice, order, and freedom what the Marquis de Sade is to love. — 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.

You cannot paint the Mona Lisa by assigning one dab each to a thousand painters. — 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.

They [progressives] are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm. — William F. Buckley Jr.