01UndatedThe nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised.George F. Will / quote ↗
02UndatedSex education in the modern manner has been well-described as plumbing for hedonists.George F. Will / quote ↗
03UndatedTalk about presidents "taking" the country hither and yon is part of the foam of presidential elections.George F. Will / quote ↗
04UndatedThere may be arrogance – and the laziness of someone who is indefatigable when doing what he enjoys, but only when doing that.George F. Will / quote ↗
05UndatedPeople who have nothing much in mind for next week speak instead about the next century or millennium.George F. Will / quote ↗
06UndatedTime was when much of lawyering consisted (according to turn-of-the-century lawyer and statesman Elihu Root) in "telling would-be clients that they are damned fool's, and should stop.George F. Will / quote ↗
07UndatedIn times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. John Dos PassosGeorge F. Will / quote ↗
08UndatedIn this age of 'whatever,' Americans are becoming slaves to the new tyranny of nonchalance. " James MorrisGeorge F. Will / quote ↗
09UndatedWhen a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but, at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. His every day becomes more of adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him, that, in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. Alexis de TocquevilleGeorge F. Will / quote ↗
10UndatedHe was one of the fortunate few for whom there simply was no discernible line between work and play, between creation and recreation.George F. Will / quote ↗
11UndatedThe most capricious modern entitlement is not just Social Security but to self-esteem.George F. Will / quote ↗
12UndatedLiberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like.George F. Will / quote ↗
13UndatedIn Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God.George F. Will / quote ↗
16UndatedA cardinal tenet of conservatism is that social inertia is – and ought to be – strong. It discourages and, if necessary, defeats the political grandiosity of those who would attempt to engineer the future by rupturing connections with the past.George F. Will / quote ↗
17UndatedFrom visible habits we make inferences as to the invisible attributes of the soul. Therefore, statecraft is soulcraft.George F. Will / quote ↗
18UndatedGifted teachers master the patience required for the unending business of transmitting civilization down the generations, transforming biological facts – children – into social artifacts called citizens. It is wearying work and it is a wonder teachers can summon the stamina for it.George F. Will / quote ↗
20UndatedAuthor complains about "the further submergence of irrecoverable history into a perpetually churned present.George F. Will / quote ↗
21UndatedThe columnist gives these words to the longings of an 11-year-old he meets with Tourette's syndrome: "Wisdom is encoded in our common language. We all have, to some extent, a complex, sometimes adversarial, relationship with our physical selves. And I more than most people know that it is correct to say,'I have a body.' There is my body, and then there is ME, trying to make it behave.George F. Will / quote ↗
23Undatedif we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state.George F. Will / quote ↗
24UndatedGovernment could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things.George F. Will / quote ↗
