Garry Wills Quotes

• Accountability is the essence of democracy. If people do not know what their government is doing, they cannot be truly self-governing. The national security state assumes the government secrets are too important to be shared, that only those in the know can see classified information, that only the president has all the facts, that we must simply trust that our rulers of acting in our interest.

  Garry Wills

  Government, Self, Essence

  46 Copy quote

• Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

  Garry Wills

  Peace, Military, War

  17 Copy quote

• Not many of us will be leaders; and even those who are leaders must also be followers much of the time. This is the crucial role. Followers judge leaders. Only if the leaders pass that test do they have any impact. The potential followers, if their judgment is poor, have judged themselves. If the leader takes his or her followers to the goal, to great achievements, it is because the followers were capable of that kind of response.

  Garry Wills

  Impact, Goal, Judging

  Garry Wills (2013). “Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership”, p.21, Simon and Schuster

  10 Copy quote

• Leadership - mobilization toward a common goal.

  Garry Wills

  Leadership, Goal, Common

  Garry Wills (2013). “Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership”, p.120, Simon and Schuster

  9 Copy quote

• Every civilized society must disarm its citizens against each other.

  Garry Wills

  Gun, Citizens, Civilized Society

  8 Copy quote

• It's not healthy for a society if the people hate their own government.

  Garry Wills

  Hate, Government, People

  8 Copy quote

• Politicians make good company for a while just as children do - their self-enjoyment is contagious. But they soon exhaust their favourite subjects - themselves.

  Garry Wills

  Children, Self, Politician

  "Lead time". Book by Garry Wills, 1983.

  8 Copy quote

• Term limits mean that you don't trust the voters. 'Stop me before I vote again.'

  Garry Wills

  Mean, Democracy, Term Limits

  7 Copy quote

• If a nation wishes, it can have both free elections and slavery.

  Garry Wills

  Wish, Slavery, Election

  6 Copy quote

• The whole point of free expression is not to make ideas exempt from criticism but to expose them to it.

  Garry Wills

  Expression, Ideas, Criticism

  5 Copy quote

• The romantic artist, off alone in his storm-battered castle, fuming whole worlds from his brain, reflects his culture's most persistent myth, of God creating from a primal loneliness.

  Garry Wills

  Loneliness, Artist, Creating

  Garry Wills (1979). “Confessions of a conservative”, Doubleday Books

  7 Copy quote

• There is a particular danger with a war that God commands. What if God should lose?

  Garry Wills

  War, What If, Danger

  4 Copy quote

• The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers. ... Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership.

  Garry Wills

  Leadership, Goal, Support

  Garry Wills (2013). “Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leader and followers.

  Garry Wills

  Leadership, Motivation, Goal

  Garry Wills (2013). “Certain Trumpets: The Nature of Leadership”, p.17, Simon and Schuster

  7 Copy quote

• To "bear arms" is, in itself, a military term. One does not bear arms against a rabbit.

  Garry Wills

  Military, Rabbits, Doe

  7 Copy quote

• As a framer and defender of the Constitution [Madison] had no peer.

  Garry Wills

  Peers, Constitution, Framers

  6 Copy quote

• Religion embarrasses the commentators. It is offbounds. An editor of the old Life magazine once assigned me a book on religion with remark that I was the only 'religious nut' - his term for a believer - in his stable of regular reviewers.

  Garry Wills

  Christian, Religious, Book

  Garry Wills (2013). “Under God”, p.18, Simon and Schuster

  6 Copy quote

• Whenever you pray, make sure you do it at school assemblies and football games, like the demonstrative creatures who pray before large television audiences. That is the real goal of the thing. But do not, I urge you, pray all alone in your home where no one can see. That does not get you ratings.

  Garry Wills

  Football, Prayer, Real

  4 Copy quote

• Do not touch anything unnecessarily. Beware of pretty girls in dance halls and parks who may be spies, as well as bicycles, revolvers, uniforms, arms, dead horses, and men lying on roads - they are not there accidentally. Soviet infantry manual, issued in the 1930's Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

  Garry Wills

  Girl, Horse, War

  7 Copy quote

• Stevenson had noble ideas--as did the young Franklin for that matter. But Stevenson felt that the way to implement them was to present himself as a thoughtful idealist and wait for the world to flock to him. He considered it below him, or wrong, to scramble out among the people and ask them what they wanted. Roosevelt grappled voters to him. Stevenson shied off from them. Some thought him too pure to desire power, though he showed ambition when it mattered.

  Garry Wills

  Ambition, Thoughtful, Ideas

  4 Copy quote

• Oliver Cromwell (1599-1658) moved from a legitimate to a charismatic role, reversing the course followed by Washington. Yet therewere surface similarities in their careers. Both led military rebellions against English monarchs--Cromwell against Charles I, Washington against George III. Each took local militia--the "train bands" of Cromwell, the colonial levies of Washington--and forged professional armies on a national scale. Each infused a new ethos in his troops--a religious spirit in Cromwell's case, a post-colonial American identity in Washington's.

  Garry Wills

  Religious, Military, Army

  4 Copy quote

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