William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes
I would rather be governed by the first 2,000 people in the Boston phone book than the faculty of Harvard University.
This is a Bostonian version of an ancient view expressed as early as the quote from The Babylonian Talmud.
William F. Buckley Jr., Political Columnist and Author, Conservative party candidate for New York Governor, Interview, PBS Firing Line, December 16, 1989
Sourced by: Eigen's Political and Historical Quotations
He was referring to Erich Hermann Wilhelm V̦gelin; [January 3, 1901 РJanuary 19, 1985) was political philosopher. He was born in Cologne, and educated in political science at the University of Vienna, at which he became an associate professor of political science at the Faculty of Law. In 1938 he and his wife fled from the Nazi forces which had entered Vienna, and emigrated to the United States, where they became citizens in 1944. He spent most of his academic career at the University of Notre Dame, Louisiana State University, the University of Munich and the Hoover Institution of Stanford University. He was a very elitist intellectual who was a favorite of Conservatives. A number of his accomplished students, however were very egalitarian and were active liberals and populists. America is one of the few countries and cultures in the world where political, religious and philosophical views do not get passed from one generation to the next by family and teachers. America's freedom has been not only legal freedom but has stimulated cultural freedom as well, sometimes to the distress of older generations who want their values and ideas preserved and transmitted through the c=generations.
When Tocqueville studied the United States, it was inferior to the England and the other European aristocracies in science, the arts, literature, philosophy, theology and most other intellectual fields of culture and human endeavor. He did not have the opportunity to observe the interactive, long term effects of freedom, democracy, and public education. The US would become the dominant cultural nation of the world, with the English language in far greater usage than at the height of the British Empire. American Science, literature, art developed with more and more people participating in and being educated for those areas and were free to create without the restraints of government or even cultural norms. American creativity was demonstrated by more new religions being created that than in any other nation on earth.
William Frank Buckley Jr. was an American public intellectual and conservative author and commentator. In 1955, Buckley founded National Review, a magazine that stimulated the conservative movement in the late-20th century United States. Buckley hosted 1,429 episodes of the public affairs television show Firing Line (1966–1999), the longest-running public affairs show in American television history with a single host, where he became known for his distinctive Mid-Atlantic idiolect and wide vocabulary.
