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

George Will

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George Will
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: May 4
Columnist
Journalist
Champaign
Illinois
George F. Will
George Frederick Will
Audience
Less
Words
Reveal
Political
Thinks
Thinking
Subject
Politician
Subjects
Politics

More quotes by George Will

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The best use of history is as an inoculation against radical expectations, and hence against embittering disappointments.
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Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.
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The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
George Will
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Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis - how incentives influence behavior - to government.
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Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter.
George Will
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On a throne at the center of a sense of humor sits a capacity for irony. All wit rests on a cheerful awareness of life's incongruities. It is a gentling awareness, and no politician without it should be allowed near power.
George Will
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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.
George Will
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Baseball is Heaven's gift to mortals.
George Will
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The English language is not always the President's friend.
George Will
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Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking - a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations.
George Will
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Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.
George Will
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Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.
George Will
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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.
George Will
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The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
George Will
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Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
George Will
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They are supposed to be dispassionate dispensers of Pure Justice, icy islands of emotionless calculation. In short, umpires should be acute Republicans.
George Will
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Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, 'What you are doing is none of my business' and 'What I am doing is none of your business.'
George Will
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Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes.
George Will
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Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.
George Will
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Remember Henry Adam's jest that the succession of presidents from Washington to Grant disproved the theory of evolution?
George Will