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Politics Quotes by George Will

60 Politics quotes by George Will

All Politics quotes George Will’s page

A politician's words often reveal more about the audience than the subject, showing how language is used to win support. Money in politics is described as a problem that can be reduced by cutting politics out of money. Good actors create realities that matter, while those who claim the debate is over are often losing.

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

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We have far more to fear from swift than from torpid government.

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For Conservatives, seeing is believing. For liberals, believing is seeing.

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All politicians are to some extent salesmen.

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Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.

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

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

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Term limits would make Congress bolder, more independent, and less risk-averse.

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

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

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Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a…

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The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of…

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

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[P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.

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What the federal government does basically is borrow money from people and mail it to people.

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“Good actors, including political actors, do not deal in unrealities. Rather, they create realities that matter – perceptions, aspirations, allegiances.”

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If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty…

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Big government is indeed big, and like another big creature, the sauropod dinosaur, government has a primitive nervous system: The fact of…

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The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding…

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Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.

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Libertarian presidential candidate André Marrou's idea is that "government power is opposed to individual liberty." Must we still debate such sophomoric notions?...…

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Government has the role of suiting people for freedom. People aren't made for freedom spontaneously. There's sort of a 19-year race between…

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Republicans define freedom as an absence of restraints imposed by government. Democrats define freedom as an absence of necessity, which government exists…

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The cost of appearing with a bloviating ignoramus is obvious, it seems to me. Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your…

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Barack Obama, who might be mercifully closing the Clinton parenthesis in presidential history, is refreshingly cerebral amid this recrudescence of the paranoid…

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The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow…

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The Framers of the First Amendment were not concerned with preventing government from abridging their freedom to speak about crops and cockfighting,…

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Let's note, that in what I consider the most disgraceful performance abroad by an American official in my lifetime - something not…

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The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for…

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Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates,…

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Conservatives believe government's principal functions are the preservation of freedom and removal of restraints on the individual. Liberalism's ascent in the first…

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

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

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Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.

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Americans complain a lot about the government and they voice a generalized suspicion of the government, but they constantly clammer for more…

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I am opposed to term limits because if we did not have seasoned professionals, we would not have the good government that…

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

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That is the crux of modern conservatism - government taking strong measures to foster the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for increased individual…

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Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.

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

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More by George Will

The average American expends more time becoming informed about choosing a car than choosing a candidate. But, then, the consequences of the former choice…

Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.

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

As has been said, standards are always out of date - that is why we call them standards.

Hart is still like that little tub of vaguely milklike gunk that comes with airline coffee. It is labeled a "nondairy" product. Fine: we…

The realistic way to reduce the amount of money in politics is to reduce the amount of politics in money -- the importance of…

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests…

Greek philosophers considered sport a religious and civic-in a word, moral-undertaking. Sport, they said, is morally serious because mankind's noblest aim is the loving…

The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture…

When I'm in my car, I'm listening to books, audio books, always.

Just as the common law derives from ancient precedents - judges' decisions - rather than statutes, baseball's codes are the game's distilled mores. Their…

“Football combines two of the worst things in American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings.”

I've lived in Washington now for 44 years, and that's a lot of folly to witness up close. Whatever confidence and optimism I felt…

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

Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights.