Quotes by George Will

About George Will:

George Frederick Will is an American newspaper columnist and political commentator. He is a Pulitzer Prize–winner best known for his conservative commentary on politics. In 1986, The Wall Street Journal called him "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America," in a league with Walter Lippmann (1889–1974).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Committed partisans are generally the most knowledgeable voters, independents the least. And the more political knowledge people have, the more apt they are to discuss politics with people who agree with, and reinforce, them.

George Will

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

George Will

Just as the common law derives from ancient precedents - judges' decisions - rather than statutes, baseball's codes are the game's distilled mores. Their unchanged purpose is to show respect for opponents and the game. In baseball, as in the remainde...

George Will

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

George Will

Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.

George Will

Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'

George Will

Football combines the two worst things about America: it is violence punctuated by committee meetings.

George Will

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.

George Will

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

George Will

Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.

George Will

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy - judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes - because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the...

George Will

Arizona's law makes what is already a federal offense - being in the country illegally - a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona's right to assert concurrent jurisdiction.

George Will

If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the chil...

George Will

Perhaps the soundest advice for parents is: Lighten up. People have been raising children for approximately as long as there have been people.

George Will

Only recently - about five minutes ago, relative to the long-running human comedy - have parents been driving themselves to distraction by taking too seriously the idea that 'as the twig is bent the tree's inclined.'

George Will

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

The euro currency both presupposes and promotes a fiction - that 'Europe' has somehow become, against the wishes of most Europeans, a political rather than a merely geographic expression.

George Will

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 narr...

George Will

Promoting dependency is the Democratic Party's vocation. It knows that almost all entitlements are forever, and those that are not - e.g., the lifetime eligibility for welfare, repealed in 1996 - are not for the middle class.

George Will

Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties.

George Will

Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska's governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Repu...

George Will

Author Bio

  • NameGeorge Will
  • DescriptionAmerican newspaper columnist, journalist, and author
  • BornMay 4, 1941
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist