Quote

All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.

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
Point
Words
Slope
Political
Slopes
Place
Slippery
Important
Politician
Takes
Politics
Four

More quotes by George Will

Image
Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity.
George Will
Image
Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.
George Will
Image
Term limits would make Congress bolder, more independent, and less risk-averse.
George Will
Image
Machiavelli, however, took his bearings from people as they are. He defined the political project as making the best of this flawed material. He knew (in words Kant would write almost three centuries later) that nothing straight would be made from the crooked timber of humanity.
George Will
Image
The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
George Will
Image
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
Image
So the Clinton-Gore era culminates with an election as stained as the blue dress, a Democratic chorus complaining that the Constitution should not be the controlling legal authority, and Clinton's understudy dispatching lawyers to litigate this: It depends on what the meaning of 'vote' is.
George Will
Image
National security rests on the credible threat of a form of warfare universally condemned since the Dark Ages, the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants.
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
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
George Will
Image
Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.
George Will
Image
When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees? No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled What's the Matter With Kansas? Notice a pattern here?
George Will
Image
In the annals of American blunders, the Bay of Pigs may have been even more feckless, and the invasion of Iraq more costly, but we cannot yet calculate the cost of teaching Iran and others, by our role in the casual overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, the peril of not having nuclear weapons.
George Will
Image
Today it would be progress if everyone would stop talking about values. Instead, let us talk, as the Founders did, about virtues.
George Will
Image
Money is time made tangible - the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner's time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom.
George Will
Image
Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.
George Will
Image
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.
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
Stalin's henchman Molotov, 96, died old and in bed, a privilege he helped to deny to millions.
George Will
Image
The designs of the paper euros, introduced in 2002, proclaim a utopian aspiration. Gone are the colorful bills of particular nations, featuring pictures of national heroes of statecraft, culture and the arts, pictures celebrating unique national narratives. With the euro, 16 nations have said goodbye to all that.
George Will