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1 " The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. "
― George F. Will
2 " Sex education in the modern manner has been well-described as plumbing for hedonists. "
― George F. Will , The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric
3 " There may be arrogance – and the laziness of someone who is indefatigable when doing what he enjoys, but only when doing that. "
4 " People who have nothing much in mind for next week speak instead about the next century or millennium. "
5 " In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. John Dos Passos "
6 " ...it is impossible to reason people out of affiliations they have not been reasoned into. "
7 " When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but, at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. His every day becomes more of adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him, that, in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. Alexis de Tocqueville "
8 " He was one of the fortunate few for whom there simply was no discernible line between work and play, between creation and recreation. "
9 " The most capricious modern entitlement is not just Social Security but to self-esteem. "
― George F. Will , One Man's America: The Pleasures and Provocations of Our Singular Nation
10 " Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like. "
11 " In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God. "
12 " Enough anecdotes make a pattern. "
13 " Politics is always driven by competing worries. "
14 " A cardinal tenet of conservatism is that social inertia is – and ought to be – strong. It discourages and, if necessary, defeats the political grandiosity of those who would attempt to engineer the future by rupturing connections with the past. "
15 " From visible habits we make inferences as to the invisible attributes of the soul. Therefore, statecraft is soulcraft. "
16 " Gifted teachers master the patience required for the unending business of transmitting civilization down the generations, transforming biological facts – children – into social artifacts called citizens. It is wearying work and it is a wonder teachers can summon the stamina for it. "
17 " Institutions are lengthening shadows of strong individuals. "
18 " In war the moral is to the material as three to one. Napoleon "
19 " if we could tax Americans' cognitive dissonance we could balance the budget. The American people want all kinds of incompatible things, they're human beings, and they want high services, low taxes, and an omnipresent, omniprominent welfare state. "
20 " Government could avoid having opinions about so many things if it would quit subsidizing so many things. "
