220 Quotes by George F. Will

Baseball’s best teams lose about sixty-five times a season. It is not a game you can play with your teeth clenched.

The pursuit of perfection prevents achievement of the satisfactory.

Popularity makes no law invulnerable to invalidation. Americans accept judicial supervision of their democracy – judicial review of popular but possibly unconstitutional statutes – because they know that if the Constitution is truly to constitute the nation, it must trump some majority preferences.

All politicians are to some extent salesmen.

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.

Fish have got to swim. Birds have got to fly, and Clintons have to run for office. It’s what they do. It’s a metabolic urge. That’s all they’ve done their entire life is borrow money from rich people to seek public office.

The essence of constitutionalism in a democracy is not merely to shape and condition the nature of majorities, but also to stipulate that certain things are impermissible, no matter how large and fervent a majority might want them.

Freedom is not only the absence of external restraints. It is also the absence of irresistible internal compulsions, unmanageable passion, and uncensorable highlights.

Money is time made tangible – the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner’s time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom.