George Will Quotes

I grew up in central Illinois midway between Chicago and St. Louis and I made an historic blunder. All my friends became Cardinals fans and grew up happy and liberal and I became a Cubs fan and grew up embittered and conservative.

George Will: That's right.

If you reward bad behavior, you get more of it.

Byrd [former Senator Robert Byrd of West Virginia] rose to his current eminence from conditions of severe poverty, and he represents a poor state, so perhaps some of his grasping should be forgiven. Some, but not this egregious sort. His career has become a caricature of a particularly crass and cynical theory of representation. 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.

The family is the primary transmitter of social capital – the values and character traits that enable people to seize opportunities. Family structure is a primary predictor of an individual's life chances, and family disintegration is the principal cause of the intergenerational transmission of poverty.

Capital is mobile. It goes where it is welcomed and stays where it is well-treated, so states compete to create tax and regulatory environments conducive to job creation. Liberals call this a "race to the bottom." Conservatives call it a race to rationality.

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

Many of the words and numbers bandied by Obama and his administration may reflect an honest belief that the world is whatever well-intentioned people like them say about it. So, Obama's critics should reconsider their assumption that he is cynical. It is his sincerity that is scary.

In the immediate aftermath of the heroic rescue of soldiers from Dunkirk, Winston Churchill addressed the British as adults, reminding them that ‘wars are not won by evacuations.’

When a politician, on a subject implicating science — hard science, economic science, social science — says, ‘The debate is over,’ you may be sure of two things. It’s that the debate is raging and he’s losing it.

When a politician says, concerning an issue involving science, that the debate is over, you may be sure the debate is rolling on and not going swimmingly for his side.

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.

I’m a big believer in parties, in party strength and party tickets. Not this year.

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

: Who do you plan to vote in November?