George Will quotes - page 2

Arizona's law makes what is already a federal offense - being in the country illegally - a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona's right to assert concurrent jurisdiction. (George Will)
If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone. View quote
George Will
There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice. View quote
George Will
Geology has joined biology in lowering mankind's self-esteem. Geology suggests how mankind's existence is contingent upon the geological consent of the planet. View quote
George Will
Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by... liberals. View quote
George Will
Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions. View quote
George Will
Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes. View quote
George Will
When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate. View quote
George Will
When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees?" No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled "What's the Matter With Kansas?" View quote
George Will
As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise. View quote
George Will
Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known. (George Will)
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. View quote
George Will
In the lexicon of the political class, the word "sacrifice" means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it. View quote
George Will
The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity – the political allocation of wealth and opportunity – is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.”. View quote
George Will
The cultivation -- even celebration -- of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint. View quote
George Will
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!" View quote
George Will
The theory is that election to Congress is tantamount to being dispatched to Washington on a looting raid for the enrichment of your state or district, and no other ethic need inhibit the feeding frenzy. View quote
George Will
Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people. View quote
George Will
We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual. View quote
George Will
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. View quote
George Will
Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience. (George Will)
The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of america is justice and securing the blessings of liberty. View quote
George Will
Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence. View quote
George Will
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 Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom. View quote
George Will
Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents. View quote
George Will