George Will Quotes

George Will: Oh yes.

For conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing.

Orwellian is an overused adjective, but here it applies. In 1948 Orwell said watch the language because it becomes turned inside out. In Nineteen Eighty-Four love meant hate, war meant peace and on campus today diversity means enforced conformity.

Susan Page: First time you've ever voted for a Democrat for president.

Someone who is determined to disbelieve something can manage to disregard an Everest of evidence for it.

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

: Who do you plan to vote in November?

I believe the most important decision taken anywhere by anyone in the 20th century was the decision about where to locate the Princeton Graduate College. President of the University Thomas Woodrow Wilson wanted it down on the campus, integrated with the undergraduate college. His nemesis, Dean Andrew Fleming West, wanted it where it now is, up on a little hill overlooking the Princeton golf course. President Woodrow Wilson had one of his characteristic snits, resigned as president, went into politics and ruined the 20th century.

George Will: That's right.

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.’

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

Reformers desperate to resuscitate taxpayer funding [of elections] cite the supposedly scandalous fact that each party's 2008 presidential campaign may spend $500 million. If so, Americans volunteering to fund the dissemination of speech about candidates for the nation's most consequential office will contribute $1 billion, which is about half the sum they spend annually on Easter candy. Some scandal.

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.

The people do not decide issues, they decide who shall decide.

Taking offense has become America’s national pastime; being theatrically offended supposedly signifies the exquisitely refined moral delicacy of people who feel entitled to pass through life without encountering ideas or practices that annoy them.