94 Quotes by William F. Buckley Jr.

Not everything that is legal is reputable.

People are beginning to wish that the voters had been given breathometer tests when they voted in the present government.

Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.

All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores.

The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase.

I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition. I asked myself the other day, “Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?” I couldn’t think of anyone.

No one since the Garden of Eden – which the serpent forsook in order to run for higher office – has imputed to politicians great purity of motive.

I’ve always believed that conservatism is the politics of reality, and that reality ultimately asserts itself in a reasonably free society, in behalf of the conservative position.

Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You’d get a solemn and contrite, Yes.