American writer & political commentator (1925-2008)
Boredom is the deadliest poison.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
Milestones
Idealism is fine, but as it approaches reality, the costs become prohibitive.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
Up From Liberalism
The cost of the drug war is many times more painful, in all its manifestations, than would be the licensing of drugs combined with intensive education of non-users and intensive education designed to warn those who experiment with drugs.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
The War on Drugs is Lost
There is an inverse relationship between reliance on the state and self-reliance.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
Up From Liberalism
It is safe to say that if the Communists took over the Sahara Desert tomorrow, two things would happen. First, nothing. And second, with their centralized approach to the market, there would be a shortage of sand.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
"Buckley Heard By Tulane Unit", New Orleans Times-Picayune, April 22, 1971
Conservatives pride themselves on resisting change, which is as it should be. But intelligent deference to tradition and stability can evolve into intellectual sloth and moral fanaticism, as when conservatives simply decline to look up from dogma because the effort to raise their heads and reconsider is too great.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
National Review, June 29, 2004
I've always subconsciously looked out for the total Christian and when I found him he turned out to be a non-practicing Jew.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
Let Us Talk of Many Things
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.
God and Man at Yale
The best defense against usurpatory government is an assertive citizenry.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
Windfall: The End of the Affair
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.
National Review, January 16, 1962
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.
Happy Days Were Here Again
Our political economy and our high-energy industry run on large, general principles, on ideas -- not by day-to-day guess work, expedients and improvisations. Ideas have to go into exchange to become or remain operative; and the medium of such exchange is the printed word.
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
"Publisher's Statement", National Review, November 19, 1955
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.
Up from Liberalism
Democracy 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, JR.
God and Man at Yale
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
Miles Gone By
The largest cultural menace in America is the conformity of the intellectual cliques which, in education as well as the arts, are out to impose upon the nation their modish fads and fallacies, and have nearly succeeded in doing so. In this cultural issue, we are, without reservations, on the side of excellence (rather than "newness") and of honest intellectual combat (rather than conformity).
WILLIAM F. BUCKLEY, JR.
"Our Mission Statement", National Review, November 19, 1955