George Will

Football incorporates the two worst elements of American society violence punctuated by committee meetings.

This is an age in which one cannot find common sense without a search warrant.

The pursuit of perfection often impedes improvement.

In the 1940s a survey listed the top seven discipline problems in public schools talking, chewing gum, making noise, running in the halls, getting out of turn in line, wearing improper clothes, not putting paper in wastebaskets. A 1980s survey lists these top seven drug abuse, alcohol abuse, pregnancy, suicide, rape, robbery, assault. (Arson, gang warfare and venereal disease are also-rans.)

We know next to nothing about virtually everything. It is not necessary to know the origin of the universe it is necessary to want to know. Civilization depends not on any particular knowledge, but on the disposition to crave knowledge.

The future has a way of arriving unannounced.

It is extraordinary how extraordinary the ordinary person is.

A society that thinks the choice between ways of living is just a choice between equally eligible 'lifestyles' turns universities into academic cafeterias offering junk food for the mind.

Football is a mistake. It combines the two worst elements of American life. Violence and committee meetings.

Americans are overreachers overreaching is the most admirable of the many American excesses.

Sports serve society by providing vivid examples of excellence.

It is not observed in history that families improve with time.

I walked beside the evening sea And dreamed a dream that could not be The waves that plunged along the shore Said only Dreamer, dream no more