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A properly functioning free market system does not spring spontaneously from society's soil as crabgrass springs from suburban lawns. Rather, it is a complex creation of laws and mores... Capitalism is a government program.

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
System
Complexes
Suburban
Law
Complex
Spontaneously
Society
Capitalism
Lawns
Rather
Market
Functioning
Free
Program
Springs
Doe
Laws
Properly
Government
Spring
Libertarian
Creation
Soil
Mores

More quotes by George Will

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The most important business of one generation is the raising of the next generation. Nothing else you do in life will be as deeply satisfying.
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Invariably, it is this for which I write: the joy ... of an argument firmly made, like a nail straightly driven, its head flush to the plank.
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Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order.
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As has been said, standards are always out of date - that is why we call them standards.
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Americans are conservative. What they want to conserve is the New Deal.
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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.
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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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Nationalism is blamed for this century's wars, but nationalism need not mean militarism. And the nation-state has been the laboratory of liberty.
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If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.
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Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.
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It was over in a blink of an eye, that moment when aviation stirred the modern imagination. Aviation was transformed from recklessness to routine in Lindbergh's lifetime. Today the riskiest part of air travel is the drive to the airport, and the airlines use a barrage of stimuli to protect passengers from ennui.
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Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.
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Once when the Yankee's Lou Pinella was batting he questioned a Palermo strike call. Pinella demanded, Where was that pitch at? Palermo told him that a man wearing Yankee pinstripes in front of 30,000 people should not end a sentence with a preposition. So Pinella, no dummy, said, OK, where was that pitch at, asshole?
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The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961.
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The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.
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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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Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
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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.
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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.'
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The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron.
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