George Will Quotes (66 Quotes)

Part of the beauty and much of the moral seriousness of sport derives from the severe justice of strenuous play in a circumscribed universe of rules that protect the integrity of competition. Records are worth recording, and worth striving to surpass, because they serve as benchmarks of excellence achieved under the pressure of competition.

It is said that God gave us memory so we could have roses in winter. But it is also true that without memory we could not have self in any season. The more memories you have, the more you have. That is why, as Swift said, ''No wise man ever wished to be younger.''

Conservatives define themselves in terms of what they oppose.

In the 1940s a survey listed the top seven discipline problems in public schools talking, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, getting out of line, wearing improper clothes, and not putting paper in wastebaskets. A more recent survey lists these top seven drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, and assault. (Arson, gang warfare, and venereal disease are also-rans).

A disquieting era of genetic manipulation is coming, one that may revolutionize human capacities, and notions of health. If we treat moral scruples impatiently, as inherently retrograde in a scientifically advancing civilization, we will not be in moral trim when, soon, our very humanity depends on our being in trim.

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

Football brings out the sociologist that lurks in some otherwise respectable citizens. They say football is a metaphor for America's sinfulness.

Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction.

Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called ''self-interestedness.'' This was not a

Whatever right the Second Amendment protects is not as important as it was 200 years ago... The government should deconstitutionalize the subject by repealing the embarrasing Amendment.

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

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

Patrick Buchanan wants to build a better yesterday

American politics as you know . . . is very often a matter of capture the flag. The party that loses the flag, as the Democratic party did basically from 1972 through the Iran hostage crisis, is in trouble.

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

Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes.