George Will

“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.”

“Voters cannot hold officials responsible if they do not know what government is doing, or which parts of government are doing what.”

“The average American expends more time becoming informed about choosing a car than choosing a candidate. But, then, the consequences of the former choice are immediate and discernible.”

“Modern parents want to nurture so skillfully that Mother Nature will gasp in admiration at the marvels their parenting produces from the soft clay of children.”

“Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.”

“Leadership is, among other things, the ability to inflict pain and get away with it - short-term pain for long-term gain.”

“Being elected to Congress is regarded as being sent on a looting raid for one's friends.”

“Children who open their lunchboxes and find mothers' handwritten notes telling them how amazingly bright they are tend to falter when they encounter academic difficulties.”

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

“If you seek Hamilton's monument, look around. You are living in it. We honor Jefferson, but live in Hamilton's country, a mighty industrial nation with a strong central government.”

“When I'm in my car, I'm listening to books, audio books, always.”

“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.”

“Pessimism is as American as apple pie - frozen apple pie with a slice of processed cheese.”

“Politics should share one purpose with religion: the steady emancipation of the individual through the education of his passions.”

“There may be more poetry than justice in poetic justice.”

“Money is time made tangible - the time invested in the earning of it. Taxation is the confiscation of the earner's time. Although some taxation is necessary, all taxation diminishes freedom.”

“The first election I remember was Dewey Truman in '48. I was, I guess, seven years old.”

“The future has a way of arriving unannounced.”