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Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes.

William F. Buckley, Jr.

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William F. Buckley, Jr.
Age: 82 †
Born: 1925
Born: November 24
Died: 2008
Died: February 27
Journalist
Novelist
Politician
Television Presenter
Writer
New York City
New York
William F. Buckley Jr.
William Frank Buckley Jr.
William Frank Buckley
Jr.
William Frank Buckley
America
Forbid
Would
Solemn
Smoking
Stick
Sticks
Authority
Question
Contrite
Asks
Confessional

More quotes by William F. Buckley, Jr.

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One doesn't read Jane Austen one re-reads Jane Austen.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out.
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Bobby Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller are having a row, ostensibly over the plight of New York's mentally retarded, a loose definition of which would include everyone in New York who voted for Bobby Kennedy or Nelson Rockefeller.
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Reagan is both too fatalistic and too modest to be a crudaser. He doesn't have that darkness around the eyes of a George McGovern.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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The sobering anwer is yes - the white community is so entitled because ... it is the advanced race ... it is more important ... to affirm and live by civilized standards ... than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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The principal sponsors of the terrorists are not religious fanatics. Palestine's Yasser Arafat, Iraq's Saddam Hussein, and Syria's Assad family have made themselves the icons of Islamism despite the fact that they are well-known atheists who live un-Muslim lives and have persecuted unto death the Muslim movements in their countries.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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I would sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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We are, always, reminded of the old saw: What would happen if the Soviet Union took over the Sahara Desert? Answer: Nothing for 50 years. After that there would be a shortage of sand.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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People are beginning to wish that the voters had been given breathometer tests when they voted in the present government.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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Christianity finds all its doctrines stated in the Bible, and Christianity denies no part, nor attempts to add anything to the Word of God.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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If Bach is not in Heaven, I am not going!
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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History is but the polemics of the victor.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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He [Cassius Clay] became a Black Muslim, which is a pseudo-religion for unbright neurotics who feel the need to hate all white people.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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All that is good is not embodied in the law and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws but it needs strong mores.
William F. Buckley, Jr.
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Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
William F. Buckley, Jr.