Inspirational Quotes
Words to motivate, inspire, and guide you.
George Will Quotes
HistoryLeadershipPoliticsPublic OpinionRace In 2008, Barack Obama had all the wind at his back, everything going for him. He was an African-American at a time when the country was eager to do that. The Republicans had, in the view of many of us, pretty much disgraced themselves at home and abroad for eight years.
HumorRecognition and PrideSociety and CultureSportsmanship Traditionally, baseball punishes preening. In a society increasingly tolerant of exhibitionism, it is splendid when a hitter is knocked down because in his last at bat he lingered at the plate to admire his home run.
FreedomHistoryIdentityInnocenceLiberty I suppose there's a melancholy tone at the back of the American mind, a sense of something lost. And it's the lost world of Thomas Jefferson. It is the lost sense of innocence that we could live with a very minimal state, with a vast sense of space in which to work out freedom.
EducationIndividual EmancipationPassionsPoliticsReligion Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.
Class and SocietyEconomicsPoliticsSocial Policy Democrats believe, plausibly, that middle-class entitlements are instantly addictive and, because there is no known detoxification, that class, when facing future choices between trimming entitlements or increasing taxes, will choose the latter.
Immigration PolicyLaw and JurisdictionState vs Federal Authority 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.
ChangeHistoryLeadershipPoliticsPopulism In 1976, Jimmy Carter - peanut farmer; carried his own suitcase, imagine that - somewhat tapped America's durable but shallow reservoir of populism. By 1980, ordinariness in high office had lost its allure.
HistoryLeadershipOpportunityPoliticsTransformation Barack Obama hopes his famous health care victory will mark him as a transformative president. History, however, may judge it to have been his missed opportunity to be one.
DemocracyPoliticiansPoliticsTransactionVoters Politics in a democracy is transactional: Politicians seek votes by promising to do things for voters, who seek promises in exchange for their votes.
EntertainmentHealth RisksPublic AwarenessSportsViolence Football is entertainment in which the audience is expected to delight in gladiatorial action that a growing portion of the audience knows may cause the players degenerative brain disease.
AudienceCommunicationManipulationPerceptionPolitics A politician's words reveal less about what he thinks about his subject than what he thinks about his audience.
Corporate PowerEconomicsGovernment PolicyPublic PolicyTaxation Corporations do not pay taxes, they collect them, passing the burden to consumers as a cost of production. And corporate taxation is a feast of rent-seeking - a cornucopia of credits, exemptions and other subsidies conferred by the political class on favored, and grateful, corporations.
Citizenship and RightsHistorical PerspectiveImmigration PolicyLaw and LegislationLegal Principles If those who wrote and ratified the 14th Amendment had imagined laws restricting immigration - and had anticipated huge waves of illegal immigration - is it reasonable to presume they would have wanted to provide the reward of citizenship to the children of the violators of those laws? Surely not.
Cultural DespairDisillusionmentEconomic SymbolsEuropean IdentityHistory and Memory The euro pleases dispirited people for whom European history is not Chartres and Shakespeare but the Holocaust and the Somme. The euro expresses cultural despair.
ConstitutionDebateImpactLawPolitics Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
ControversyDecision MakingLeadershipPoliticsPublic Perception Sarah Palin, who with 17 months remaining in her single term as Alaska's governor quit the only serious office she has ever held, is obsessively discussed as a possible candidate in 2012. Why? She is not going to be president and will not be the Republican nominee unless the party wants to lose at least 44 states.
AggressionBehavioral DevelopmentChildhood PlayGender RolesImagination Some parents say it is toy guns that make boys warlike. But give a boy a rubber duck and he will seize its neck like the butt of a pistol and shout 'Bang!'
ConstitutionDemocracyJudicial ReviewLawMajority Rule 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.
EconomicsGovernment PolicyPoliticsReformTaxation When liberals advocate a value-added tax, conservatives should respond: Taxing consumption has merits, so we will consider it - after the 16th Amendment is repealed.
Crime and PunishmentJusticeSocial Issues Today more Americans are imprisoned for drug offenses than for property crimes.
HistoryIncumbencyLeadershipPartisanshipPolitics Since the emergence of the Republican Party, only two Democratic presidents, Franklin Roosevelt and John Kennedy, have been followed by Democrats, and both FDR and JFK died in office, so their successors ran as incumbents.
Economic PolicyGovernment PowerManipulation and InfluenceSocial JusticeWealth Inequality Big government inevitably drives an upward distribution of wealth to those whose wealth, confidence and sophistication enable them to manipulate government.
BiologyCommunicationGovernmentPrimitive SystemsSize Big government is indeed big, and like another big creature, the sauropod dinosaur, government has a primitive nervous system: The fact of an injury to the tail could take nearly a minute to be communicated to the sauropod brain.
EliteMediocrityParadoxPoliticsPublic Good Politicians fascinate because they constitute such a paradox; they are an elite that accomplishes mediocrity for the public good.
ChildhoodExperienceGrowthPerceptionSeriousness Childhood is frequently a solemn business for those inside it.
CorruptionEthicsPoliticsPowerTrust Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.
PartisanshipPolarizationPolitical DiscoursePolitical KnowledgeVoter Behavior Committed partisans are generally the most knowledgeable voters, independents the least. And the more political knowledge people have, the more apt they are to discuss politics with people who agree with, and reinforce, them.
Generational ConnectionIdentity and CultureKnowledge and LearningMedia and CommunicationSports and Baseball I just got hooked on the radio, the voice of it all. It was my connection to metropolitan America, if you will. Sports, in particularly baseball then 'cause of its rich sediment of numbers, was one of the first things a young person could peg up with adults on - that is, you could know as much about Jimmy Fox as your father did.