George Will Quotes

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'

Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

Ronald Reagan has held the two most demeaning jobs in the country; President of the United States and radio broadcaster for the Chicago Cubs.

The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny "arf" - the sound of a lap dog.

Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.

A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.

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.

Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.

We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual.

Nationalism is blamed for this century's wars, but nationalism need not mean militarism. And the nation-state has been the laboratory of liberty.

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.

Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.

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.

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.'

Canada has one great novelist (Robertson Davies), which means it has one for every twenty-five million citizens - the world's highest ratio.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron.

When a politician says the debate is over, you can be sure of two things; the debate is raging; and he's losing it.

We are suffering from a kind of slow-motion barbarization from within.

Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

Hyperbole expands in societies where articulateness atrophies.

The proof of liberal virtue is generousity with other people's money.

Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.

Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.

The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of america is justice and securing the blessings of liberty.

It is no longer enough to be lusty. One must be a sexual gourmet.

Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago... The government should deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrasing Amendment.

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.

Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.

The First Amendment...begins with the five loveliest words in the English language: 'Congress shall make no law'.

Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.

The Berlin Wall is the defining achievement of socialism.

The reformers' preferred metaphor is "leveling the playing field." They should listen to the logic of their language: fields are leveled by bulldozers.

The Soviet Union tried for 70 years to plant Marxism with bayonets in Eastern Europe. Today there are more Marxists on the Harvard faculty than there are in Eastern Europe.

What is really shocking in America isn't what's done in and by Washington that is illegal by that what is done in and by Washington that's legal.

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.

We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county. The idea that we can't assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous.

Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.

This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.

No matter how deeply you distrust the government's judgment, you are too trusting.

Liberalism is wrong because it doesn't work. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.

World War II was the last government program that really worked.

It is extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.

The great task of life is transmission: the task of transmitting the essential tools and graces of life from our parents to our children

Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.

Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people.