Quote

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.

George Will

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

George Will
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: May 4
Columnist
Journalist
Champaign
Illinois
George F. Will
George Frederick Will
Political
America
Government
Continuous
Skepticism
Thread
Strongest
Tradition

More quotes by George Will

Image
The Holy Roman Empire was neither holy nor Roman nor an empire, the United Nations is a disunited collection of regimes, many of which do not represent the nations they govern.
George Will
Image
Mitt Romney's losing at this point in a big way. If something's going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why - given that Mr. Romney knew the day that [Sen. John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again - that he didn't get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest.
George Will
Image
I don't think anyone has ever announced running for president that they want to change the Bill of Rights.
George Will
Image
She is so totally absorbed in a vocation - both a gift and a mastering passion - that she has no time to be absorbed with the self's worries about itself. And that is the moral of the story: You can pursue happiness by wearing a torn jersey. You can catch it by being good at something you love.
George Will
Image
Sports is the toy department of life.
George Will
Image
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
Image
Nationalism is blamed for this century's wars, but nationalism need not mean militarism. And the nation-state has been the laboratory of liberty.
George Will
Image
In September 1942 the U.S. government purchased 58,575 acres of wilderness in eastern Tennessee. Soon there was a town, Oak Ridge, and amazing scientific facilities. Thirty-four months after the purchase, an atomic blast lit the New Mexico desert. After 43 months in Iraq, U.S. forces still struggle to cope with improvised explosive devices.
George Will
Image
The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny arf - the sound of a lap dog.
George Will
Image
The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
George Will
Image
We have 3,141 counties in this country. That would be 20 per county. The idea that we can't assimilate these 8-year-old criminals with their teddy bears is preposterous.
George Will
Image
The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.
George Will
Image
Concerning [postmodern] ideas, let us not mince words. The ideas are profoundly dangerous. They subvert our civilization by denying that truth is found by conscientious attempts accurately to portray a reality that exists independently of our perception or attitudes or other attributes such as race, ethnicity, sex or class.
George Will
Image
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
Image
Twenty minutes into his presidency, Donald Trump, who is always claiming to have made, or to be about to make, astonishing history, had done so. Living down to expectations, he had delivered the most dreadful inaugural address in history.
George Will
Image
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
George Will
Image
The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.
George Will
Image
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
George Will
Image
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.
George Will
Image
The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory.
George Will