George Will
George Will
George Frederick Willis an American newspaper columnist and political commentator. He is a Pulitzer Prize–winner known for his conservative commentary on politics. In 1986, The Wall Street Journal called him "perhaps the most powerful journalist in America," in a league with Walter Lippmann...
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth4 May 1941
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Populism has had as many incarnations as it has had provocations, but its constant ingredient has been resentment, and hence whininess. Populism does not wax in tranquil times; it is a cathartic response to serious problems. But it always wanes because it never seems serious as a solution.
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Poetry is simply the most beautiful, impressive and widely effective mode of saying things, and hence their importance.
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By intensity of hatred, nations create in themselves the character that they imagine in their enemies. Hence it comes that all passionate conflicts result in an interchange of characteristics. We might say with truth, those who hate open a door by which their enemies enter and make their own the secret places of the heart.
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Schools, including universities, must insist upon the prestige of reading and especially of reading old books.
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Scholars concede but cannot explain the amazing chemistry of Cub fans' loyalty. But their unique steadfastness through thin and thin has something to do with the team's Franciscan simplicity.
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Greed is envy with its sleeves rolled up.
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Some calamities - the 1929 stock market crash, Pearl Harbor, 9/11 - have come like summer lightning, as bolts from the blue. The looming crisis of America's Ponzi entitlement structure is different. Driven by the demographics of an aging population, its causes, timing and scope are known.
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Like a graceful vase, a cat, even when motionless, seems to flow.
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There is a declining number of Americans paying income taxes, while more and more people are dependent for things that fewer and fewer people are paying for.
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Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society: violence punctuated by committee meetings.
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Political ignorance helps explain Americans' perpetual disappointment with politicians generally, and presidents especially, to whom voters unrealistically attribute abilities to control events.
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Just as the common law derives from ancient precedents - judges' decisions - rather than statutes, baseball's codes are the game's distilled mores. Their unchanged purpose is to show respect for opponents and the game. In baseball, as in the remainder of life, the most important rules are unwritten. But not unenforced.
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Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.
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The great task of life is transmission: the task of transmitting the essential tools and graces of life from our parents to our children