Top 100 William F. Buckley Jr. Quotes
#2. A capitalist is someone who derives a substantial share of his income from his equity in producing companies. On this scale the figures are discouraging. Approximately ninety percent of the capital of this country is owned by five or less percent of the American people.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#3. But how reassuring it was for us, you remember, every now and then ("Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall"), to vibrate to the music of the very heartstrings of the Leader of the Free World who, to qualify convincingly as such, had after all to feel a total commitment to the Free World.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#4. Now it is one thing to say I say it that people shouldn't consume psychoactive drugs. It is entirely something else to condone marijuana laws, the application of which resulted, in 1995, in the arrest of 588,963 Americans. Why are we so afraid to inform ourselves on the question?
William F. Buckley Jr.
#5. When it is not possible to reason with holy warriors, it is necessary to immobilize them or crush them.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#6. The sobering anwer is yes - the white community is so entitled because ... it is the advanced race ... it is more important ... to affirm and live by civilized standards ... than to bow to the demands of the numerical majority.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#9. I mean to live my life an obedient man, but obedient to God, subservient to the wisdom of my ancestors; never to the authority of political truths arrived at yesterday at the voting booth.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#11. Arlen Specter is the man who voted in favor of Bill Clinton during impeachment, voted against Robert Bork for the Supreme Court, voted against school choice for the District of Columbia, endorses an absolutist interpretation of abortion rights. He is bright and he is tough and he belongs elsewhere.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#12. It is widely known that whenever Senator Johnson feels the urge to act the statesman at the cost of a little political capital," WFB wrote in June 1958, "he lies down until he gets over it.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#13. Though liberals do a great deal of talking about hearing other points of view, it sometimes shocks them to learn that there are other points of view.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#14. Marijuana is not much more difficult to obtain than beer. The reason for this is that a liquor store selling beer to a minor stands to lose its liquor license. Marijuana salesmen don't have expensive overheads, and so are not easily punished.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#15. I'd rather entrust the government of the United States to the first 400 people listed in the Boston telephone directory than to the faculty of Harvard University.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#16. The New York Times, whose editorial department sounds like Cotton Mather rewriting Eleanor Roosevelt ...
William F. Buckley Jr.
#18. Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#19. I've always believed that conservatism is the politics of reality, and that reality ultimately asserts itself in a reasonably free society, in behalf of the conservative position.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#20. How can one deduce the cause of "Hamlet" or "Saint Matthew's Passion"? What is the cause of inspiration?
William F. Buckley Jr.
#21. She [Ayn Rand] had to declare that....altruism was despicable, that only self-interest is good and noble. (About Ayn Rand)
William F. Buckley Jr.
#22. I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#23. Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#25. One can't doubt that the American objective in Iraq has failed - different plans have to be made. And the kernel here is the acknowledgement of defeat.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#27. [The] act of gratitude is nowadays is probably more often neglected than overdone.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#28. Even if one takes every reefer madness allegation of the prohibitionists at face value, marijuana prohibition has done far more harm to far more people than marijuana ever could.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#29. What would happen if the Communists occupied the Sahara? Answer: Nothing - for 50 years. Then there would be a shortage of sand.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#30. Conservatism aims to maintain in working order the loyalties of the community to perceived truths and also to those truths which in their judgment have earned universal recognition.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#31. The superstition that the hounds of truth will rout the vermin of error seems, like a fragment of Victorian lace, quaint, but too brittle to be lifted out of the showcase.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#32. Khrushchev murders people without regard to race, color, or creed, and therefore whatever he is guilty of, he is not guilty of discrimination?
William F. Buckley Jr.
#34. People are beginning to wish that the voters had been given breathometer tests when they voted in the present government.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#36. No one since the Garden of Eden - which the serpent forsook in order to run for higher office - has imputed to politicians great purity of motive.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#37. Earlier this month the State Department gave the umpteenth performance of its popular play, Please Tread on Me, with Ceylon as guest star, and the usual cast.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#39. Christianity finds all its doctrines stated in the Bible, and Christianity denies no part, nor attempts to add anything to the Word of God.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#40. France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#41. They told me if I voted for Goldwater, he would get us into a war in Vietnam. Well, I voted for Goldwater and that's what happened.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#42. The majority of the senior class of Vassar does not desire my company and I must confess, having read specimens of their thought and sentiments, that I do not desire the company of the majority of the senior class of Vassar.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#43. We view our atomic arsenal as proudly and as devotedly as any pioneer ever viewed his flintlock hanging over the mantel as his children slept, and dreamed.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#44. We are so concerned to flatter the majority that we lose sight of how very often it is necessary, in order to preserve freedom for the minority, let alone for the individual, to face that majority down.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#45. He [Cassius Clay] became a Black Muslim, which is a pseudo-religion for unbright neurotics who feel the need to hate all white people.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#46. The Beatles are not merely awful. They are so unbelievably horrible, so appallingly unmusical, so dogmatically insensitive to the magic of the art, that they qualify as crowned heads of anti-music.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#47. He was a conservative all right, but invariably he gave the impression that he was a conservative because he was surrounded by liberals; that he had been a revolutionist if that had been required in order to be socially disruptive.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#50. I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#52. I catch fire and find the reserves of courage and assertiveness to speak up. When that happens I get quite carried away. My blood gets hot my brow wet I become unbearably and unconscionably sarcastic and bellicose I am girded for a total showdown.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#53. A relatively small and eternally quarrelsome country in Western Europe, fountainhead of rationalist political manias, militarily impotent, historically inglorious during the past century, democratically bankrupt, Communist-infiltrated from top to bottom.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#55. To Buckley, she embodied the worst of what in subsequent decades would be called political correctness: the mindless application to every issue of a platitudinous egalitarianism whose practical effect invariably is to expand the reach of totalitarianism.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#56. Bobby Kennedy and Nelson Rockefeller are having a row, ostensibly over the plight of New York's mentally retarded, a loose definition of which would include everyone in New York who voted for Bobby Kennedy or Nelson Rockefeller.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#57. I am obliged to confess I should sooner live in a society governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than in a society governed by the two thousand faculty members of Harvard University.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#59. Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#61. It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except the intended target!
William F. Buckley Jr.
#63. Kennedy after all has lots of glamour - Gregory Peck with an atom bomb in his holster.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#66. I believe that the duel between Christianity and atheism is the most important in the world. I further believe that the struggle between individualism and collectivism is the same struggle reproduced on another level.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#67. Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them
William F. Buckley Jr.
#68. All that is good is not embodied in the law; and all that is evil is not proscribed by the law. A well-disciplined society needs few laws; but it needs strong mores.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#69. Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#71. The socialized state is to justice, order, and freedom what the Marquis de Sade is to love.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#72. There will be no legacy for Mr. Bush. I don't believe his
successor would re-enunciate the words he used in his
second inaugural address because they were too ambitious.
So therefore I think his legacy is indecipherable.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#74. The anti-marijuana campaign is a cancerous tissue of lies, undermining law enforcement, aggravating the drug problem, depriving the sick of needed help and suckering well-intentioned conservatives and countless frightened parents.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#76. Truth is a demure lady, much too ladylike to knock you on your head and drag you to her cave. She is there, but people must want her, and seek her out.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#77. Friendship is strengthened by ... that which ever so lightly elevates us from the trough of self-concern and self-devotion.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#79. The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#80. If you had a European prime minister who experienced what we've experienced it would be expected that he would retire or resign,
William F. Buckley Jr.
#81. The police can't use clubs or gas or dogs. I suppose they will have to use poison ivy.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#82. I won't insult your intelligence by suggesting that you really believe what you just said.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#83. Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#85. Enthusiasm for conservation can be fashioned into a nasty weapon for those who dislike business on general principles.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#86. Before there was Ronald Reagan there was Barry Goldwater, and before there was Barry, there was National Review , and before there was National Review there was Bill Buckley with a spark in his mind.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#87. Socialize the individual's surplus and you socialize his spirit and creativeness ...
William F. Buckley Jr.
#88. The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#89. A society is not 'free' merely because the freedoms the people are doing away with are those they voted at the last election to do without.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#90. What yells out at the US public ... is the incandescent hypocrisy of so many people who, in the name of free speech, persecute its practitioners if their opinions are conservative.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#91. The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#92. We are, always, reminded of the old saw: What would happen if the Soviet Union took over the Sahara Desert? Answer: Nothing for 50 years. After that there would be a shortage of sand.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#93. Conservatism is the tacit acknowledgement that all that is finally important in human experience is behind us; that the crucial explorations have been undertaken, and that it is given to man to know what are the great truths that emerged from them.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#95. Birch fallacy is the assumption that you can infer subjective intention from objective consequence: we lost China to the Communists, therefore the President of the United States and the Secretary of State wished China to go to the Communists.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#96. The real threat, as seen by the ACLU, is that religious behavior might give secular behavior a bad name, and that is, surely, unconstitutional.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#98. Professor Galbraith is horrified by the number of Americans who have bought cars with tail fins on them, and I am horrified by the number of Americans who take seriously the proposals of Mr. Galbraith.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#99. [D]emocracy can itself be as tyrannical as a dictatorship, since it is the extent, not the source, of government power that impinges on freedom.
-William F Buckley
William F. Buckley Jr.
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