Top 160 George F. Will Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “Arizona’s law makes what is already a federal offense – being in the country illegally – a state offense. Some critics seem not to understand Arizona’s right to assert concurrent jurisdiction.”

— George F. Will

152. “World War II was the last government program that really worked.”

— George F. Will

153. “Stalin’s henchman Molotov, 96, died old and in bed, a privilege he helped to deny to millions.”

— George F. Will

154. “The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof.”

— George F. Will

155. “Freedom means the freedom to behave coarsely, basely, foolishly.”

— George F. Will

156. “It has made mincemeat of Barack Obama’s pose of thoughtfulness. It has demonstrated that he lacks even a rudimentary understanding of the most basic economic realities. It has dramatized environmentalism’s descent into infantilism.”

— George F. Will

157. “Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.”

— George F. Will

158. “Like a snail crossing a sidewalk, the Clinton Administration leaves a lengthening trail of slime, this time on America’s national honor.”

— George F. Will

159. “The realistic way to reduce the amount of money in politics is to reduce the amount of politics in money – the importance of government in allocating wealth and opportunity.”

— George F. Will

160. “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 F. Will

161. “The First Amendment is not a blanket freedom-of-information act. The constitutional newsgathering freedom means the media can go where the public can, but enjoys no superior right of access.”

— George F. Will

162. “There is no hatred as corrupting as intellectual hatred.”

— George F. Will

163. “What the federal government does basically is borrow money from people and mail it to people.”

— George F. Will

164. “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 F. Will

165. “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.”

— George F. Will

166. “Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter.”

— George F. Will

167. “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 F. Will

168. “Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like.”

— George F. Will

169. “Americans are overreaching; overreaching is the most admirable and most American of the many American excesses.”

— George F. Will

170. “That is the crux of modern conservatism – government taking strong measures to foster the attitudes and aptitudes necessary for increased individual independence.”

— George F. Will

171. “Politics is always driven by competing worries.”

— George F. Will

172. “Commercial society regards people as bundles of appetites, a conception that turns human beings inside out, leaving nothing to be regarded as inherently private.”

— George F. Will

173. “The argument that a particular project will be “self-financing” is usually the first refuge of politicians defending the indefensible.”

— George F. Will

174. “Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day.”

— George F. Will

175. “The people who flood our living-rooms with a smorgasbord of commercial messages about fetid breath, moist underarms and troubled intestines know this: an appropriate time, place and manner to sell a product is any that sells the product.”

— George F. Will

176. “When a politician says, concerning an issue involving science, that the debate is over, you may be sure the debate is rolling on and not going swimmingly for his side.”

— George F. Will

177. “There is an aura of changelessness to sport. There is the flux of competition, but it occurs within the ordering confinement of clear rules.”

— George F. Will

178. “Speaking for George Will, on whose thinking I am world’s foremost authority, I say: not necessarily. The heavy hitters do have heavy responsibilities.”

— George F. Will

179. “Relief pitchers have only recently begun receiving proper recognition. When Whitey Ford rose at the New York Baseball Writers banquet to receive the Cy Young Award for the 1961 season, he said he had a nine-minute speech but would deliver only seven minutes of it. He would let Luis Arroyo, who had saved so many of Ford’s wins, do the final two minutes.”

— George F. Will