William F. Buckley, Jr.
God and Man at Yale, published in 1951, is the work with which William F. Buckley Jr. first made his mark as a writer and political commentator — a book produced when its author was still in his mid-twenties, addressing the institution where he had just completed his education.
Buckley was born on 24 November 1925 in New York City. He attended Millbrook School and then Yale University, where he also studied at Davenport College. Those years of formal education supplied the subject matter for his 1951 book. A practicing Roman Catholic and American conservative, he went on to work across several overlapping roles: journalist, novelist, television presenter, and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist. He lived in New York City and Stamford, Connecticut.
Four years after the book appeared, in 1955, Buckley founded National Review, a political magazine. In 1966 he began hosting Firing Line, a television program he would continue to present for thirty-three years, completing 1,429 episodes before the series concluded in 1999. Alongside those endeavors he maintained a career as a novelist and as a syndicated columnist, occupying simultaneously the roles of writer, journalist, politician, and public intellectual.
His work was recognized by several institutions. He received the National Book Award, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, and the Library of Congress Living Legend award. Buckley died on 27 February 2008 in Stamford. The 1,429th and final episode of Firing Line, which he completed in 1999 after more than three decades as its host, marks a concrete endpoint to a television career that ran from the mid-1960s through the close of the twentieth century.
Quotes by William F. Buckley, Jr.
Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.
Before there was Ronald Reagan there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry, there was National Review , and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind.
Now it is one thing to say I say it that people shouldn't consume psychoactive drugs. It is entirely something else to condone marijuana laws, the application of which resulted, in 1995, in the arrest of 588,963 Americans. Why are we so afraid to inform ourselves on the question?
Those who suffer from the abuse of drugs have themselves to blame for it. This does not mean that society is absolved from active concern for their plight. It does mean that their plight is subordinate to the plight of those citizens who do not experiment with drugs but whose life, liberty, and property are substantially affected by the illegalization of the drugs sought after by the minority.
They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened.
Old ladies photographed by CBS who announced that they would die of malnutrition if Reagan's bill were passed could probably have saved themselves their impending penury by the simple device of applying to the American Federation of Television and Radio Artists for scale every time they were featured by Dan Rather or whoever.
Enthusiasm for conservation can be fashioned into a nasty weapon for those who dislike business on general principles.
The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional.
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.
The police can't use clubs or gas or dogs. I suppose they will have to use poison ivy.