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George Will

13 quotes

The identity of George Will may be elusive, but the power of their words is anything but. With equal ease, George Will moved between Politics and Freedom, finding connections others missed. Our collection holds 21 quotes from George Will, each offering a different angle on Politics, Freedom, History, Government, and War. As George Will put it: "World War II was the last government program that really worked."

“World War II was the last government program that really worked.”

— George Will

Government

All Quotes by George Will

“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

Government

“Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.”

— George Will

Politics

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

— George Will

Experience

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

— George Will

Leadership

“Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.”

— George Will

Freedom

“World War II was the last government program that really worked.”

— George Will

Government

“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

Freedom

“There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.”

— George Will

Poetry

“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

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

Freedom

“Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.”

— George Will

Education

“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.”

— George Will

Future

“Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.”

— George Will

Politics