The Woven Figure Quotes

“The utter absence of proof for a proposition is proof of a successful conspiracy to destroy all proof.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Liberalism is not fond of fun, or at least of many forms of fun that many people like.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“In Gladstone's mature years he lost faith not in God but in the ability of any government or state to act as the agent of God.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Diplomacy without armaments is like music without instruments. – Frederick the Great”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“There is no hatred as corrupting as intellectual hatred.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“When a workman is unceasingly and exclusively engaged in the fabrication of one thing, he ultimately does his work with singular dexterity; but, at the same time, he loses the general faculty of applying his mind to the direction of the work. His every day becomes more of adroit and less industrious; so that it may be said of him, that, in proportion as the workman improves, the man is degraded. Alexis de Tocqueville”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“The argument that a particular project will be "self-financing" is usually the first refuge of politicians defending the indefensible.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Americans would prefer that immigrants do their jobs and then disappear at the end of the day.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“In times of change and danger, when there is a quicksand of fear under one's reasoning, a sense of continuity with generations before can stretch like a lifeline across the scary present. John Dos Passos”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Politics is always driven by competing worries.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“He was one of the fortunate few for whom there simply was no discernible line between work and play, between creation and recreation.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“It is a distinctive American genius, this ability to transmute subversion into a marketable commodity.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Washington DC is happiest when in indignation overdrive.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Lacking an articulable defense of the cultural values under siege, he became a vessel of smoldering animosities.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Television news is akin to audible wallpaper.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Soothing assumptions about the good faith and shared interests of antagonists are natural to democracy, as is the desire to spend money on things other than defense. Getting a democracy to do what does not come naturally requires leadership.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Talk about presidents "taking" the country hither and yon is part of the foam of presidential elections.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Economics has accurately been called the science of the single instance.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“People who have nothing much in mind for next week speak instead about the next century or millennium.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“There may be arrogance – and the laziness of someone who is indefatigable when doing what he enjoys, but only when doing that.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Enough anecdotes make a pattern.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Government breeds more government, and a lobbying infrastructure to defend itself.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“There is nothing quite like a dose of unvarnished history for inoculating people against the tendency to indict the present for failing to measure up to a sentimental notion of the past.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Sport does not just build character, it reveals it.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Time was when much of lawyering consisted (according to turn-of-the-century lawyer and statesman Elihu Root) in "telling would-be clients that they are damned fool's, and should stop.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Law, rather than harnessing the passions, is increasingly pressed into their service.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Our hatred of government is not caused mainly by government's goals, whatever their wisdom, but by government's techniques." Philip Howard”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Society is a crucible of character formation.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“From visible habits we make inferences as to the invisible attributes of the soul. Therefore, statecraft is soulcraft.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric

“Sandel hankers for the muscular debates of yesteryear, when government was not big but had bigger ambitions than today's bland Leviathan has.”
― George F. Will, The Woven Figure: Conservatism and America's Fabric