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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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George Will
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: May 4
Columnist
Journalist
Champaign
Illinois
George F. Will
George Frederick Will
Requires
None
Civilization
Depends
Often
Business
Life
Civility
Willingness

More quotes by George Will

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Republicans define freedom as an absence of restraints imposed by government. Democrats define freedom as an absence of necessity, which government exists to reduce. America has not moved as far as it thinks it has beyond the argument about the New Deal, when FDR insisted, Necessitous men are not free men.
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The First Amendment is not a blanket freedom-of-information act. The constitutional newsgathering freedom means the media can go where the public can, but enjoys no superior right of access.
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Remember Henry Adam's jest that the succession of presidents from Washington to Grant disproved the theory of evolution?
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Pettiness is the tendency of people without large purposes.
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All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.
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The business of America is not business. Neither is it war. The business of america is justice and securing the blessings of liberty.
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Like a snail crossing a sidewalk, the Clinton Administration leaves a lengthening trail of slime, this time on America's national honor.
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Donald Trump is redundant evidence that if your net worth is high enough, your IQ can be very low and you can still intrude into American politics.
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Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate... Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis.
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Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turns human beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.
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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.
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The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron.
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Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.
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Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.
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As Aristotle said, happiness is not a condition that is produced or stands on its own rather, it is a frame of mind that accompanies an activity. But another frame of mind comes first. It is a steely determination to do well.
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Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
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Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.
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Sports is a moral undertaking because it requires of participants, and it schools spectators in the appreciation of, noble things - courage, grace under pressure, sportsmanship.
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The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.
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America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government's refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists 'comprehensive' immigration reform.
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