George Will Quotes - Page 5

Semicolons . . . signal, rather than shout, a relationship. . . . A semicolon is a compliment from the writer to the reader. It says: "I don't have to draw you a picture; a hint will do."

It is important that Miers not be confirmed unless, in her 61st year, she suddenly and unexpectedly is found to have hitherto undisclosed interests and talents pertinent to the court's role. Otherwise the sound principle of substantial deference to a president's choice of judicial nominees will dissolve into a rationalization for senatorial abdication of the duty to hold presidents to some standards of seriousness that will prevent them from reducing the Supreme Court to a private plaything useful for fulfilling whims on behalf of friends.

Overcriminalization has become a national plague.

It is no exaggeration to conclude that the Internet has achieved, and continues to achieve, the most participatory marketplace of mass speech that this country - and indeed the world - has yet seen.

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

When liberals' presidential nominees consistently fail to carry Kansas, liberals do not rush to read a book titled "What's the Matter With Liberals' Nominees?" No, the book they turned into a bestseller is titled "What's the Matter With Kansas?" Notice a pattern here?

For as long as I can remember the slogan has been ... the federal government ought to behave more like families, because families balance their budgets. It turns out that families looked around and said, "You know what? Let's behave more like the government!"

Romney, supposedly the Republican most electable next November, is a recidivist reviser of his principles who is not only becoming less electable; he might damage GOP chances of capturing the Senate... Republicans may have found their Michael Dukakis.

Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.

Americans, more than most people, believe that history is the result of individual decisions to implement conscious intentions. For Americans, more than most people, history has been that.... This sense of openness, of possibility and autonomy, has been a national asset as precious as the topsoil of the Middle West. But like topsoil, it is subject to erosion; it requires tending. And it is not bad for Americans to come to terms with the fact that for them too, history is a story of inertia and the unforeseen.

She is so totally absorbed in a vocation - both a gift and a mastering passion - that she has no time to be absorbed with the self's worries about itself. And that is the moral of the story: You can pursue happiness by wearing a torn jersey. You can catch it by being good at something you love.

It (baseball) has no clock, no ties and no Liberal intrusions into the organized progression.

The strongest continuous thread in America's political tradition is skepticism about government.

Chicago Cubs fans are ninety percent scar tissue.

A decrease in the quantity of legislation generally means an increase in the quality of life.

It is no longer enough to be lusty. One must be a sexual gourmet.

Since 1946, the Cubs have had two problems: They put too few runs on the scoreboard and the other guys put too many. So what is the new management improving? The scoreboard.

We have far more to fear from swift than from torpid government.

Each achieves one or both of two objectives — making liberals feel good about themselves and being good to liberal candidates.

The Obama administration's agenda of maximizing dependency involves political favoritism cloaked in the raiment of "economic planning" and "social justice" that somehow produce results superior to what markets produce when freedom allows merit to manifest itself, and incompetence to fail. The administration's central activity - the political allocation of wealth and opportunity - is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption.

The sequester has forced liberals to clarify their conviction that whatever the government's size is at any moment, is the bare minimum neccessary to forestall intolerable suffering.

According to the University of Illinois' Arctic Climate Research Center, global sea ice levels now equal those of 1979.

The Framers of the First Amendment were not concerned with preventing government from abridging their freedom to speak about crops and cockfighting, or with protecting the expressive activity of topless dancers, which of late has found some shelter under the First Amendment. Rather, the Framers cherished unabridged freedom of political communication.

Look, three love affairs in history, are Abelard and Eloise, Romeo and Juliet and the American media and this President at the moment. But this doesn't matter over time. Reality will impinge. If his programs work, he's fine. If it doesn't work, all of the adulation of journalists in the world won't matter.

Creative semantics is the key to contemporary government; it consists of talking in strange tongues lest the public learn the inevitable inconveniently early.