William F. Buckley, Jr. Quotes - Page 3

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• A society is not 'free' merely because the freedoms the people are doing away with are those they voted at the last election to do without.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  People, Lasts, Election

  William F. Buckley, Jr. (1959). “Up from Liberalism”

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• Bobby Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller are having a row, ostensibly over the plight of New York's mentally retarded, a loose definition of which would include everyone in New York who voted for Bobby Kennedy or Nelson Rockefeller.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  New York, Plight, Definitions

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• The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Art, Magic, Awful

  William F. Buckley, Jr. (2016). “A Torch Kept Lit: Great Lives of the Twentieth Century”, p.129, Crown Forum

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• I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Humorous, Believe, Practice

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• Did you know that forty percent of the words used by Shakespeare were used by him only once?

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Used, Forty, Percent

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• France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Peace, War, Believe

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• If Bach is not in Heaven, I am not going!

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Heaven, Ifs

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• Socialize the individual's surplus and you socialize his spirit and creativeness.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Spirit, Individual, Surplus

  William F. Buckley Jr. (2010). “Athwart History: Half a Century of Polemics, Animadversions, and Illuminations: A William F. Buckley Jr. Omnibus”, p.41, Encounter Books

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• Professor Galbraith is horrified by the number of Americans who have bought cars with tail fins on them, and I am horrified by the number of Americans who take seriously the proposals of Mr. Galbraith.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Money, Numbers, Car

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• Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Music, Years, Piano

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• Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Weed, Marijuana, People

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• Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Beautiful, Voice, Rocks

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• The police can't use clubs or gas or dogs. I suppose they will have to use poison ivy.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Dog, Punishment, Ivy

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• The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Religious, Real, Names

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• They are men and women who tend to believe that the human being is perfectible and social progress predictable, and that the instrument for effecting the two is reason; that truths are transitory and empirically determined; that equality is desirable and attainable through the action of state power; that social and individual differences, if they are not rational, are objectionable, and should be scientifically eliminated; that all people and societies strive to organize themselves upon a rationalist and scientific paradigm.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Believe, Men, Individual Differences

  "The Obliging Order: William F. Buckley’s War on Totalitarianism and Blandness" by Thomas F. Bertonneau, www.firstprinciplesjournal.com. Fall 2008.

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• A good debater is not necessarily an effective vote-getter: you can find a hole in your opponent's argument through which you could drive a coach and four ringing jingle bells all the way, and thrill at the crystallization of a truth wrung out from a bloody dialogue - which, however, may warm only you and your muse, while the smiling paralogist has in the meantime made votes by the tens of thousands.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Jingles, Thrill, Bells

  William F. Buckley, Jr. (1966). “The Unmaking of a Mayor”, Viking Adult

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• Treatment is not now available for almost half of those who would benefit from it. Yet we are willing to build more and more jails in which to isolate drug users even though at one-seventh the cost of building and maintaining jail space and pursuing, detaining, and prosecuting the drug user, we could subsidize commensurately effective medical care and psychological treatment.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Jail, Space, Drug

  William F. Buckley Jr.'s Address to the New York Bar Association, www.nationalreview.com. July 28, 2014.

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• A capitalist is someone who derives a substantial share of his income from his equity in producing companies. On this scale the figures are discouraging. Approximately ninety percent of the capital of this country is owned by five or less percent of the American people.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Wisdom, Country, People

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• The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Errors, Superstitions, Lace

  National Review, January 16, 1962.

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• Industry is the enemy of melancholy

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Enemy, Melancholy, Industry

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• Self-control is one of the most exhilarating of pleasures.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Self, Self Control, Pleasure

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• Christianity finds all its doctrines stated in the Bible, and Christianity denies no part, nor attempts to add anything to the Word of God.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Faith, Doctrine, Add

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• No one since the Garden of Eden - which the serpent forsook in order to run for higher office - has imputed to politicians great purity of motive.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Running, Garden, Order

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• Friendship is strengthened by...that which ever so lightly elevates us from the trough of self-concern and self-devotion.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  Self, Devotion, Concern

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• History is but the polemics of the victor.

  William F. Buckley, Jr.

  History, Polemics

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