"Capital punishment, like the rest of the criminal justice system, is a government program, so skepticism is in order."
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Quote collection
George Will quotes (page 6 of 13)
250 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"Football brings out the sociologist that lurks in some otherwise respectable citizens. They say football is a metaphor for America's sinfulness."
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"Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes"
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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."
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"It was over in a blink of an eye, that moment when aviation stirred the modern imagination. Aviation was transformed from recklessness to routine in Lindbergh's lifetime. Today the riskiest part of air travel is the drive to the airport, and the airlines use a barrage of stimuli to protect passengers from ennui."
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"I sometimes think that when he was at Harvard Law School, Mr. Obama cut class the day they got to the separation of powers, 'cause he seems to consider it not just an inconvenience but an indignity that, although he got 270 electoral votes and therefore gets to be president, he didn't get everything."
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"If your job is to leaven ordinary lives with elevating spectacle, be elevating or be gone."
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"For Conservatives, seeing is believing; for liberals, believing is seeing."
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"Conservatives believe government's principal functions are the preservation of freedom and removal of restraints on the individual. Liberalism's ascent in the first two-thirds of this century reflected the new belief that government should also confer capacities on individuals. Liberalism's decline in the final third of this century has reflected doubts about whether government can be good at that, or whether government that is good at that is good for the nation's character."
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"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!""
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"As society becomes more complex and opaque, as social processes seem more impersonal and autonomous, and as elites of 'experts' become more annoying, more people are tempted to think that some 'they' is manipulating 'us', using, among other dark arts, advertising."
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"I am opposed to term limits because if we did not have seasoned professionals, we would not have the good government that we have."
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"Night baseball isn't an aberration. What's an aberration is a team that hasn't won a World Series since 1908. They tend to think of themselves as a little Williamsburg, a cute little replica of a major league franchise. Give me the Oakland A's, thank you very much. People who do it right."
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"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."
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"I don't think anyone has ever announced running for president that they want to change the Bill of Rights."
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"Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by... liberals."
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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."
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"Few things are as stimulating as other people's calamities observed from a safe distance."
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"The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory."
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"Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights."
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