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We have far more to fear from swift than from torpid government.

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
Government
Torpid
Swift
Fear

More quotes by George Will

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The people who flood our living-rooms with a smorgasbord of commercial messages about fetid breath, moist underarms and troubled intestines know this: an appropriate time, place and manner to sell a product is any that sells the product.
George Will
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Liberalism is wrong because it doesn't work. If a company is too big to fail, it is too big to exist.
George Will
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I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life.
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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It is no longer enough to be lusty. One must be a sexual gourmet.
George Will
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The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory.
George Will
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Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter.
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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All politics takes place on a slippery slope. The most important four words in politics are up to a point.
George Will
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I don't think anyone has ever announced running for president that they want to change the Bill of Rights.
George Will
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Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.
George Will
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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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Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
George Will
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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.
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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[P]rogressivism is a top-down, continent-wide tissue of taxes, mandates, and other coercions.
George Will
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In the lexicon of the political class, the word 'sacrifice' means that the citizens are supposed to mail even more of their income to Washington so that the political class will not have to sacrifice the pleasure of spending it.
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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It is axiomatic: When there is no penalty for failure, failures proliferate.
George Will
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As advertising blather becomes the nation's normal idiom, language becomes printed noise.
George Will