Top 100 William Buckley Quotes
#2. It's great to be with William Buckley, because you don't have to think. He takes a position and you automatically take the opposite one and you know you're right.
John Kenneth Galbraith
#3. The best advice on writing I've ever received was from William Zinsser: 'Be grateful for every word you can cut.'
Christopher Buckley
#5. 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.
#6. William F. Buckley, Jr. does not speak so much as exhale, but he exhales polysyllabically, and the results are remarkable.
Edwin Newman
#7. 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.
#8. 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.
#9. When it is not possible to reason with holy warriors, it is necessary to immobilize them or crush them.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#10. Reagan is both too fatalistic and too modest to be a crudaser. He doesn't have that darkness around the eyes of a George McGovern.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#11. 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.
#12. I spent, whether consciously or unconsciously, most of my career trying to be something other than William F. Buckley's son.
Christopher Buckley
#15. 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.
#17. 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.
#18. 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.
#19. 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.
#20. 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.
#21. Mr. Rockefeller is due to entertain munificently at breakfast, and make his pitch. My advice to one invited guest was: Order caviar, and then say No.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#22. 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.
#23. The New York Times, whose editorial department sounds like Cotton Mather rewriting Eleanor Roosevelt ...
William F. Buckley Jr.
#25. 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.
#26. 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.
#27. When Gore Vidal was coming up, there were three major channels, and he could count on a big audience when he debated someone like William F. Buckley on TV.
Jay Parini
#28. How can one deduce the cause of "Hamlet" or "Saint Matthew's Passion"? What is the cause of inspiration?
William F. Buckley Jr.
#29. It seems to me that the idea traditionally defended of endeavoring to maintain existing ethnic balances simply doesn't work any more.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#30. 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.
#31. I would like to electrocute everyone who uses the word 'fair' in connection with income tax policies.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#32. Liberals claim to want to give a hearing to other views, but then are shocked and offended to discover that there are other views.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#33. Government can't do anything for you except in proportion as it can do something to you.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#35. Following Mrs. Roosevelt in search of irrationality was like following a burning fuse in search of an explosive.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#36. 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.
#37. Did you know that forty percent of the words used by Shakespeare were used by him only once?
William F. Buckley Jr.
#39. The traces to the East haven been broken, the Republican party will never again be dominated by the editorial writers for the New York Herald Tribune. Free at last.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#40. [The] act of gratitude is nowadays is probably more often neglected than overdone.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#41. 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.
#42. 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.
#43. 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.
#44. 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.
#45. 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.
#46. I grew up, as reported, in a large family of Catholics without even a decent ration of tentativeness among the lot of us about our religious faith.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#48. People are beginning to wish that the voters had been given breathometer tests when they voted in the present government.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#50. 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.
#51. I would sooner be governed by the first two thousand names in the Boston telephone directory than by the two thousand members of the faculty of Harvard.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#52. 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.
#54. 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.
#55. Knee-jerk liberals and all the certified saints of sanctified humanism are quick to condemn this great and much-maligned Transylvanian statesman.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#56. 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.
#57. 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.
#58. 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.
#59. 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.
#60. 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.
#61. 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.
#62. 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.
#63. I find it easier to believe in God than to believe Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#64. Liberals, it has been said, are generous with other peoples' money, except when it comes to questions of national survival when they prefer to be generous with other peoples' freedom and security.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#65. I am, I fully grant, a phenomenon, but not because of any speed in composition. I asked myself the other day, "Who else, on so many issues, has been so right so much of the time?" I couldn't think of anyone.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#66. 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.
#67. If he was, somehow at the margin deficient, it was because the country did not rise to ask of him the performance of a thunderbolt. He gave what he was asked to give. And he leaves us (or "will leave") if not exactly bereft, lonely; lonely for the quintessential American. END.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#69. Louis Kelso of San Francisco, a lawyer-economist, has for years felt that he has a radical answer to the problem.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#71. 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.
#73. William F. Buckley was a man who had a great capacity for fun and for amusing himself by amazing others.
Dick Cavett
#74. 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.
#75. 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.
#77. 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.
#79. 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.
#81. If I were to win the Nobel Prize in Literature - which I think it's fairly safe to say is not going to happen - I would still expect the headline on my obituary to read: 'Christopher Buckley, son of William F. Buckley, Jr., is dead at 78.'
Christopher Buckley
#82. 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.
#84. 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.
#86. It had all the earmarks of a CIA operation; the bomb killed everybody in the room except the intended target!
William F. Buckley Jr.
#89. To buy very good wine nowadays requires only money. To serve it to your guests is a sign of fatigue.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#91. Kennedy after all has lots of glamour - Gregory Peck with an atom bomb in his holster.
William F. Buckley Jr.
#94. 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.
#95. Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them
William F. Buckley Jr.
#98. In my mid-adolescence, my friend Terry Martin and I became obsessed with William F. Buckley. This makes more sense when you realize that we were living in Bible Belt farming country miles from civilization. Buckley seemed impossibly exotic.
Malcolm Gladwell
#99. 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.
#100. Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.
William F. Buckley Jr.
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