49 Quotes by Garry Wills

He must have been like a thin brown skeleton autumn leaf dancing eternally before the wind; but in truth it was he that was the wind.

Inefficiency is to be our safeguard against despotism.

The advantage of a permanent emergency for the executive is that even trivial things can routinely be accomplished by the crisis presidency. If everything is an emergency, all power is emergency power.

Louisiana looked like a bonanza to people anxious to unload their slaves at high prices--and it looked that way precisely because Jefferson excluded slave importations from abroad.

The leader is one who mobilizes others toward a goal shared by leaders and followers. ... Leaders, followers and goals make up the three equally necessary supports for leadership.

Only the winners decide what were war crimes.

There's an interesting contrast between born Catholics and converts. Converts are often much more rule-directed. Catholicism isn't something that they breathed in from their childhood, so they think that if you don't toe the line on abstract doctrine you can't be part of the Church.

I have nothing against priests. In fact, I tried for a time to be one... It should be clear, then, that I respect, and am often fond of, the many priests in my life.

I don't really write for an audience. I just write what the subject seems to me to require.