“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
“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
“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
“Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.”
— George Will
Education
“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
“Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.”
— George Will
Politics
“Well, you know, the definition of second marriage is the triumph of hope over experience.”
— George Will
Experience
“Voters don't decide issues, they decide who will decide issues.”
— George Will
Politics
“World War II was the last government program that really worked.”
— George Will
Government
“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.”
— George Will
Future
“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
“There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.”
— George Will
Poetry