William F. Buckley Quotes

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.

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.

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

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.

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.

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.

Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other people's freedom and security.

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.

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

When it is not possible to reason with holy warriors, it is necessary to immobilize them or crush them.

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'

The duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world, and the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.

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.

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

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

If only the left hated crime as much as they hated hate.

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.

There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.

I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.

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

Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them

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.

Only government can cause inflation, preserve monopoly, and punish enterprise.

One must bear in mind that the expansion of federal activity is a form of eating for politicians.

They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened.

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.

France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers.

Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.

Conservatism is the politics of reality

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

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.

What was wrong with communism wasn't aberrant leadership, it was communism.

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.

People are beginning to wish that the voters had been given breathometer tests when they voted in the present government.

Not everything that is legal is reputable.

I would 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.

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

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.

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

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.

You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.

History is but the polemics of the victor.

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.

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.

Nobody who's ever been to Gulag is a pacifist.

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

Scientists are people who build the Brooklyn Bridge and then buy it.

Enthusiasm for conservation can be fashioned into a nasty weapon for those who dislike business on general principles.

Why should any country continue, forever, to be "great"?

Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.