Quotes by George F. Will

Gifted 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.

Institutions are lengthening shadows of strong individuals.

Author complains about the further submergence of irrecoverable history into a perpetually churned present.

The columnist gives these words to the longings of an 11-year-old he meets with Tourettes 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.

In war the moral is to the material as three to one. Napoleon

if we could tax Americans cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, theyre human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state.

Government could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things.

Economics has accurately been called the science of the single instance.

The United States is a successful nation that is constantly susceptible to melancholy because things are not perfect.

There is no hatred as corrupting as intellectual hatred.

There is nothing quite like a dose of unvarnished history for inoculating people against the tendency to indict the present for failing to measure up to a sentimental notion of the past.

Lacking an articulable defense of the cultural values under siege, he became a vessel of smoldering animosities.

Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day.

Who teaches young people to be so exquisitely sensitive to perceived slights, so ready to read affronts into routine events in everyday life? Their teachers no doubt.

Get evangelical Christian made them receptive to the possibility of redemption in the here and now.

Our hatred of government is not caused mainly by governments goals, whatever their wisdom, but by governments techniques. Philip Howard

Law, rather than harnessing the passions, is increasingly pressed into their service.

Washington DC is happiest when in indignation overdrive.

Civilization depends on, and civility often requires, the willingness to say, What you are doing is none of my business and What I am doing is none of your business.

Matthew Arnold was a fastidious social critic and hence an accomplished complainer. When he died, an acquaintance said: Poor Matt, hes going to Heaven, no doubt – but he wont like God.