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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.

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
Nothing
Raising
Important
Satisfying
Life
Deeply
Generation
Generations
Business
Next
Else

More quotes by George Will

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It has made mincemeat of Barack Obama's pose of thoughtfulness. It has demonstrated that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the most basic economic realities. It has dramatized environmentalism's descent into infantilism.
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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.
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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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On March 8 a poll showed Hart 9 points ahead of Reagan. So perhaps 60 million Americans, 55 million of whom had not heard of Hart a month ago, have suddenly decided thay want him to be leader of the free world. The public mind is not just soft wax, it's runny.
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In democracy, as quaintly understood, voters pick their representatives. American democracy increasingly reverses that. Legislative districts are drawn to protect incumbents who, effectively, pick their voters.
George Will
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The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory.
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.
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Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
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.
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Obama, startled that components of government behave as interest groups, seems utterly unfamiliar with public choice theory. It demystifies and de-romanticizes politics by applying economic analysis - how incentives influence behavior - to government.
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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Believing that a crisis is a useful thing to create, the Obama administration - which understands that, for liberalism, worse is better - has deliberately aggravated the fiscal shambles that the Great Recession accelerated.
George Will
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Government has the role of suiting people for freedom. People aren't made for freedom spontaneously. There's sort of a 19-year race between when people are born and when they become adults. And government has a role in making them, at the end of 19 years, suited to be upright, trustworthy repositories of popular sovereignty.
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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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
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Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking - a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations.
George Will
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Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.
George Will
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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
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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
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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