George F Will quotes

" The nice part about being a pessimist is that you are constantly being either proven right or pleasantly surprised. " # Pessimism # Optimism # Love

" The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement. " # Perfection # Happiness # Self-improvement

" We are given children to test us and make us more spiritual. " # Children

" Football combines the two worst features of American life. It is violence punctuated by committee meetings. " # Football # Committees and Meetings # Violence

" Long before Einstein told us that matter is energy, Machiavelli and Hobbes and other modern political philosophers defined man as a lump of matter whose most politically relevant attribute is a form of energy called self-interestedness. This was not a " # Self-interest # Philosophers and Philosophy # Politicians and Politics

" Modern man's capacity for destruction is quixotic evidence of humanity's capacity for reconstruction. The powerful technological agents we have unleashed against the environment include many of the agents we require for its reconstruction. " # Environmentalism # Technology # Arts and Artists

" Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be? " # Ethics # Government # Politicians and Politics

" I say statecraft is soulcraft. Just as all education is moral education because learning conditions conduct, most legislation is moral legislations because it conditions the action and the thought of the nation in broad and important spheres in life. " # Ethics # Education # Action

" Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses. " # Excess # America # Admiration

" The gap between ideals and actualities, between dreams and achievements, the gap that can spur strong men to increased exertions, but can break the spirit of others -- this gap is the most conspicuous, continuous land mark in American history. It is conspicuous and continuous not because Americans achieve little, but because they dream grandly. The gap is a standing reproach to Americans; but it marks them off as a special and singularly admirable community among the world's peoples. " # America # Freedom # Power