Quote

On a throne at the center of a sense of humor sits a capacity for irony. All wit rests on a cheerful awareness of life's incongruities. It is a gentling awareness, and no politician without it should be allowed near power.

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
Awareness
Cheerful
Humor
Irony
Sense
Wit
Incongruities
Power
Center
Incongruity
Without
Near
Throne
Life
Allowed
Rests
Politician
Sits
Capacity
Thrones

More quotes by George Will

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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
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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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Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.
George Will
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The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government's size is at any moment, is the bare minimum neccessary to forestall intolerable suffering.
George Will
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There can be no reasonable right to live on sidewalks. Society needs order, and hence has a right to a minimally civilized ambience in public spaces. Regarding the homeless, this is not merely for aesthetic reasons because the anesthetic is not merely unappealing. It presents a spectacle of disorder and decay that becomes a contagion.
George Will
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Night baseball isn't an aberration. What's an aberration is a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908. They tend to think of themselves as a little Williamsburg, a cute little replica of a major league franchise. Give me the Oakland A's, thank you very much. People who do it right.
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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It is extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.
George Will
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I am opposed to term limits because if we did not have seasoned professionals, we would not have the good government that we have.
George Will
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Fish have got to swim. Birds have got to fly, and Clintons have to run for office. It's what they do. It's a metabolic urge. That's all they've done their entire life is borrow money from rich people to seek public office.
George Will
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Man is messy, but any creature that can create space vehicles can probably cope.
George Will
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Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.
George Will
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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.
George Will
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As has been said, standards are always out of date - that is why we call them standards.
George Will
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Modern Americans travel light, with little philosophic baggage other than a fervent belief in their right to the pursuit of happiness.
George Will
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The phrase 'domestic cat' is an oxymoron.
George Will
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The reformers' preferred metaphor is leveling the playing field. They should listen to the logic of their language: fields are leveled by bulldozers.
George Will
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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
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It (baseball) has no clock, no ties and no Liberal intrusions into the organized progression.
George Will
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America overflows with specious victims demanding redress for spurious grievances. However, one genuinely oppressed minority is getting overdue relief. Beginning with spring training in Arizona and Florida, Major League Baseball, taking pity on traumatized pitchers, is directing umpires to enforce the strike zone.
George Will