William F. Buckley, Jr. Quotes

People are beginning to wish that the voters had been given breathometer tests when they voted in the present government.

Everyone detected with AIDS should be tattooed in the upper forearm, to protect common needle users, and on the buttock, to prevent the victimization of other homosexuals.

Presley brought an excitement to singing, in part because rock and roll was greeted as his invention, but for other reasons not so widely reflected on: Elvis Presley had the most beautiful singing voice of any human being on earth.

Decent people should ignore politics, if only they could be confident that politics would ignore them

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.

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.

Boredom is the deadliest poison.

... to say that the CIA and the KGB engage in similar practices is the equivalent of saying that the man who pushes an old lady into the path of a hurtling bus is not to be distinguished from the man who pushes an old lady out of the path of a hurtling bus: on the grounds that, after all, in both cases someone is pushing old ladies around.

If only the left hated crime as much as they hated hate.

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.

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.

A conservative is someone who stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no one is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.

If Bach is not in Heaven, I am not going!

I had much more fun criticizing than praising.

History is but the polemics of the victor.

The police can't use clubs or gas or dogs. I suppose they will have to use poison ivy.

The Beatles are not merely awful. I would consider it sacrilegious to say anything less than that they are godawful.

Life can't be all bad when for ten dollars you can buy all the Beethoven sonatas and listen to them for ten years.

The more complicated and powerful the job, the more rudimentary the preparation for it.

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.

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.

I find it easier to believe in God than to believe Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.

...following Mrs. Roosevelt in search of irrationality was like following a burning fuse in search of an explosive.

Kennedy after all has lots of glamour - Gregory Peck with an atom bomb in his holster.

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.

There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.

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.

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.

The academic community has in it the biggest concentration of alarmists, cranks and extremists this side of the giggle house.

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?

They [Theodore White and Lou Harris] took turns weeping, and finally concluded that Rockefeller got the votes of everyone in California who is a Negro, a Jew, a Mexican, and a college graduate, while Goldwater got the votes of every millionaire. Which certainly makes California the land of opportunity.

I would rather be governed by the first 2000 people in the Manhattan phone book than the entire faculty of Harvard.

France believes in armed intervention by America only when the intervention is in France to rescue France from occupation by other powers.

The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.

A Conservative is a fellow who is standing athwart history yelling 'Stop!'

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.

I would 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.

The government of the United States, under Lyndon Johnson, proposes to concern itself over the quality of American life. And this is something very new in the political theory of free nations. The quality of life has heretofore depended on the quality of the human beings who gave tone to that life, and they were its priests and its poets, not its bureaucrats.

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.

The socialized state is to justice, order, and freedom what the Marquis de Sade is to love.

Conservatives should be adamant about the need for the reappearance of Judeo-Christianity in the public square.

It is not a sign of arrogance for the king to rule. That is what he is there for.

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.

When it is not possible to reason with holy warriors, it is necessary to immobilize them or crush them.

[The] act of gratitude is nowadays is probably more often neglected than overdone.

You know, I’ve spent my entire life time separating the Right from the kooks.

I profoundly believe it takes a lot of practice to become a moral slob.

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.