All George Will Quotes
- Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain. Ability
- As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise. Advertising
- Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends. Congress
- The future has a way of arriving unannounced. Arriving
- The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement. Character
- 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… Central
- Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it. Business
- Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses. Admirable
- Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences. Argument
- Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly. Basely
- If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone. Elevating
- Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people. Advice
- Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese. American
- Political nature abhors a vacuum, which is what often exists for a year or two in a party after it loses a presidential election. Abhors
- Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes. Democracy
- Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions. Education
- The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government. America
- Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what. Cannot Hold
- 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… Academic
- I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas… American