Top 15 William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes

I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.

Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.

The amount of money and of legal energy being given to prosecute hundreds of thousands of Americans who are caught with a few ounces of marijuana in their jeans simply makes no sense - the kindest way to put it. A sterner way to put it is that it is an outrage, an imposition on basic civil liberties and on the reasonable expenditure of social energy.

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.

Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

To fail to experience gratitude when walking through the corridors of the Metropolitan Museum, when listening to the music of Bach or Beethoven, when exercising our freedom to speak, or ... to give, or withhold, our assent, is to fail to recognize how much we have received from the great wellsprings of human talent and concern that gave us Shakespeare, Abraham Lincoln, Mark Twain, our parents, our friends. We need a rebirth of gratitude for those who have cared for us, living and, mostly, dead. The high moments of our way of life are their gifts to us. We must remember them in our thoughts and in our prayers; and in our deeds.

Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other peoples' freedom and security.

I would like to take you seriously but to do so would affront your intelligence.

Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.

I find it easier to believe in God than to believe Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.

Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out.

Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.