George Will Quotes - Page 9

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• 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.

  George Will

  Sports, Integrity, Play

  George F. Will (2003). “With a Happy Eye, But...: America and the World, 1997--2002”, p.47, Simon and Schuster

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• Geology has joined biology in lowering mankind's self-esteem. Geology suggests how mankind's existence is contingent upon the geological consent of the planet.

  George Will

  Self Esteem, Biology, Planets

  George Will (2008). “One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation”, p.357, Crown Forum

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• Good biology without good philosophy will be a calamity.

  George Will

  Philosophy, Biology, Calamity

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• Wars do not always begin with an abrupt, cymbal-crash rupture of conditions properly characterized as peace. There can be almost seamlessly incremental transitions.

  George Will

  War, Transition, Rupture

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• Hart is still like that little tub of vaguely milklike gunk that comes with airline coffee. It is labeled a "nondairy" product. Fine: we know what is is non, but what is it?

  George Will

  Coffee, Littles, Tubs

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• On March 8 a poll showed Hart 9 points ahead of Reagan. So perhaps 60 million Americans, 55 million of whom had not heard of Hart a month ago, have suddenly decided thay want him to be leader of the free world. The public mind is not just soft wax, it's runny.

  George Will

  Leader, Mind, World

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• I think if you'd had television cameras at Gettysburg, this would be two nations today. People would not have put up with that carnage if they saw it up close. We'd have elected McClellan in 1864.

  George Will

  Thinking, Two Nations, Media

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• America overflows with specious "victims" demanding redress for spurious grievances. However, one genuinely oppressed minority is getting overdue relief. Beginning with spring training in Arizona and Florida, Major League Baseball, taking pity on traumatized pitchers, is directing umpires to enforce the strike zone.

  George Will

  Baseball, Spring, Florida

  "Reform in Baseball as In Life" by George Will, www.sfgate.com. April 2, 2001.

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• An alloy of innocence and arrogance, young (Ted) Williams came to Boston when it had four morning and four evening local newspapers engaged in perpetual circulation wars. He became grist for their mills, and his wars with the sportswriters brought out the worst in him, and cost him. He won two Most Valuable Player Awards and finished second four times. Several of those times he would have won had he not had such poisonous relations with the voting press.

  George Will

  Morning, War, Player

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• Major League Baseball's labor negotiations involve two paradoxes. The players' union's primary objective is to protect the revenues of a very few very rich owners - principally, the Yankees'. The owners' primary objective is a more egalitarian distribution of wealth. The union believes that unconstrained spending by the richest three teams pulls up all payrolls. Most owners believe that baseball's problems--competitive imbalance, the parlous financial conditions of many clubs--result from large and growing disparities of what are mistakenly treated as 'local' revenues.

  George Will

  Baseball, Team, Believe

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• The theory is that election to Congress is tantamount to being dispatched to Washington on a looting raid for the enrichment of your state or district, and no other ethic need inhibit the feeding frenzy.

  George Will

  Needs, Ethics, Election

  "Restoration: Congress, Term Limits and the Recovery of Deliberative Democracy". Book by George Will, Simon & Schuster, Chapter 1, p. 31, 1992.

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• Only in football is long-term injury the result not of accidents but of the game played properly.

  George Will

  Football, Games, Long

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• Baseball's rich in wonderful statistics, but it's hard to find one more beautiful than Stan Musial's hitting record. He didn't care where he was, he just hit.

  George Will

  Beautiful, Baseball, Records

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• Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time tells the story of a cosmologist whose speech is interrupted by a little old lady who informs him that the universe rests on the back of a turtle. Ah, yes, madame, the scientist replies, but what does the turtle rest on? The old lady shoots back: You can't trick me, young man. It's nothing but turtles, turtles, turtles, all the way down.

  George Will

  Men, Turtles, Stories

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• Stalin's henchman Molotov, 96, died old and in bed, a privilege he helped to deny to millions.

  George Will

  Bed, Privilege, Deny

  George F. Will (1992). “Suddenly: The American Idea Abroad and at Home, 1986-1990”

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• Republicans, supposed defenders of limited government, actually are enablers of an unlimited presidency. Their belief in strict construction of the Constitution evaporates, and they become, in behavior if not in thought, adherents of the woolly idea of a 'living Constitution.' They endorse, by their passivity, the idea that new threats justify ignoring the Framers' text and logic about shared responsibility for war-making.

  George Will

  War, Responsibility, Government

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• The 1935 Social Security Act established 65 as the age of eligibility for payouts. But welfare state politics quickly becomes a bidding war, enriching the menu of benefits, so in 1956 Congress entitled women to collect benefits at 62, extending the entitlement to men in 1961.

  George Will

  War, Men, Age

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• When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it - after the 16th Amendment is repealed.

  George Will

  Merit, Amendments, Should

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• The best use of history is as an inoculation against radical expectations, and hence against embittering disappointments.

  George Will

  Disappointment, History, Expectations

  George F. Will (1978). “The pursuit of happiness, and other sobering thoughts”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Twenty years ago rooting for the Yankees was like rooting for IBM.

  George Will

  Baseball, Yankees, Years

  George F. Will (1999). “Bunts”, p.34, Simon and Schuster

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• National security rests on the credible threat of a form of warfare universally condemned since the Dark Ages, the wholesale slaughter of noncombatants.

  George Will

  Dark, Age, Warfare

  George F. Will (1978). “The pursuit of happiness, and other sobering thoughts”, HarperCollins Publishers

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• Mitt Romney's losing at this point in a big way. If something's going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why - given that Mr. Romney knew the day that [Sen. John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again - that he didn't get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest.

  George Will

  Running, President, Way

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• As Aristotle said, happiness is not a condition that is produced or stands on its own; rather, it is a frame of mind that accompanies an activity. But another frame of mind comes first. It is a steely determination to do well.

  George Will

  Determination, Mind, Firsts

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• In the annals of American blunders, the Bay of Pigs may have been even more feckless, and the invasion of Iraq more costly, but we cannot yet calculate the cost of teaching Iran and others, by our role in the casual overthrow of Moammar Gaddafi, the peril of not having nuclear weapons.

  George Will

  Teaching, Iran, Iraq

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• The accusation that President Clinton cares deeply about nothing is refuted by his tenacious and guileful battle to prevent any meaningful limits on the form of infanticide known as partial-birth abortion.

  George Will

  Meaningful, Abortion, Battle

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