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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

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George Will
Age: 83
Born: 1941
Born: May 4
Columnist
Journalist
Champaign
Illinois
George F. Will
George Frederick Will
Dark
Rests
Age
Condemned
Form
Warfare
Ages
Threat
Wholesale
National
Universally
Security
Credible
Since
Slaughter

More quotes by George Will

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Libertarian presidential candidate André Marrou's idea is that government power is opposed to individual liberty. Must we still debate such sophomoric notions?... Besides, liberty, although very important, is not the only value.
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Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
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Hyperbole expands in societies where articulateness atrophies.
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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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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.
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.
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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.
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[President George W.] Bush - never mind his well-crafted set speeches listen to him as he leans on a lectern, chatting to an audience of carpenters - is completely comfortable being himself, a skill still eluding Gore in his 55th year.
George Will
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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.
George Will
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The education of this president [Obama] is a protracted and often amusing process . . . as he continues to alight upon the obvious with a sense of profound and original discovery.
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When a politician says the debate is over, you can be sure of two things the debate is raging and he's losing it.
George Will
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Society flourishes when and only when its molecular unit, the family, flourishes. We know that lasting improvement comes only in the small increments produced by individuals adhering to the simple rules of life.
George Will
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It is no longer enough to be lusty. One must be a sexual gourmet.
George Will
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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
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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
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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.
George Will
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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
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Arizona's law makes what is already a federal offense - being in the country illegally - a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona's right to assert concurrent jurisdiction.
George Will
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The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction - that 'Europe' has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.
George Will
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Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity.
George Will