George Will Quotes

Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.

The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.

There is no reason to think today’s levels of [drug] addiction are anywhere near the levels that would be reached under legalization.

Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one’s friends.

Sports is the toy department of life.

[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.

Baseball exemplifies a tension in the American mind, the constant pull between our atomistic individualism and our yearning for community.

Still, it is not perverse to wonder whether the spectacle of America, currently learning a lesson – one that conservatives should not have to learn on the job – about the limits of power to subdue an unruly world, has emboldened many enemies.

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.

Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.

America is the only developed nation that has a 2,000-mile border with a developing nation, and the government’s refusal to control that border is why there are an estimated 460,000 illegal immigrants in Arizona and why the nation, sensibly insisting on first things first, resists ‘comprehensive’ immigration reform.

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.’