George F. Will Quotes

'Tis substantially true, that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule indeed extends with more or less force to every species of free Government.

Knowledge of human nature is the beginning and end of political education.

A republican government can only be supported by virtue; and the end of all our legislation should be to encourage our fellow citizens in its daily practice.

Virtue is necessary to a republic.

Politics and life go hand in hand.

To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea.

What the statesman is most anxious to produce is a certain moral character in his fellow citizens, namely a disposition to virtue and the performance of virtuous actions.

Politics and ethics belong to different worlds.

It has been my philosophy all my life that good government is good politics.

Governance is a universal phenomenon in any society, but it may not lead a society to human development.

The laws of a country are a reflection of the values of the people.

Morality is the object of government.

The government may be made up of clever, sensible people. But if they do not believe in basic human values, the more clever or shrewd they are the greater the tragedy they will create.

Politics is about ethics and morality, openly or not openly.

Is there no virtue among us? If there be not, we are in a wretched situation. No theoretical checks-no form of government can render us secure. To suppose that any form of government will secure liberty or happiness without any virtue in the people, is a chimerical idea, if there be sufficient virtue and intelligence in the community, it will be exercised in the selection of these men. So that we do not depend on their virtue, or put confidence in our rulers, but in the people who are to choose them.

That wise Men have in all Ages thought Government necessary for the Good of Mankind; and, that wise Governments have always thought Religion necessary for the well ordering and well-being of Society, and accordingly have been ever careful to encourage and protect the Ministers of it, paying them the highest publick Honours, that their Doctrines might thereby meet with the greater Respect among the common People.

The era of big government is over, but the era of big challenge is not. We need an era of big citizenship. There are many important people at this summit, but the most important title is 'citizen.' This is our republic. Let us keep it!

Governments do not make ideals, but ideals make governments. This is both historically and logically true. Of course the government can help to sustain ideals and can create institutions through which they can be the better observed, but their source by their very nature is in the people. The people have to bear their own responsibilities. There is no method by which that burden can be shifted to the government. It is not the enactment, but the observance of laws, that creates the character of a nation.

I've had the philosophy that John Adams expressed, in the kind of system that we're trying to create in this country: that this is a system for moral people. It will work for no other.

Governments must conform to the nature of the men governed.

The virtue of the good man is necessarily the same as the virtue of the citizen of the perfect state.

Politics is how you think about life itself.

In the end the problem isn't that you have the wrong sort of government for the People, but that you have the wrong sort of People.

In the perfect state the good man is absolutely the same as the good citizen; whereas in other states the good citizen is only good relatively to his own form of government.

I've got confidence that most people in America still have a decent sense of manners, propriety, morality.