21 Quotes By George Will


Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.
George Will on education

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

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.
George Will on food

I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
George Will on freedom

Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.
George Will on freedom

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 on freedom

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
George Will on future

World War II was the last government program that really worked.
George Will on government

If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.
George Will on government

World War II was the last government program that really worked.
George Will on history

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.
George Will on history

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

Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain.
George Will on leadership

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

There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.
George Will on poetry

Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.
George Will on politics

Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.
George Will on politics

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.
George Will on politics

Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.
George Will on religion

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.
George Will on society