Baseball, it is said, is only a game. True. And the Grand Canyon is only a hole in Arizona. Not all holes, or games, are created equal.
Interpretation
This quote suggests that while baseball may be perceived as just a game, its significance can be profound, much like the Grand Canyon is more than just a geographical feature.
George Will uses the comparison of baseball to the Grand Canyon to convey that some things in life, while seemingly trivial, hold greater meaning and importance. He emphasizes that not everything is the same, and just because something is categorized as a game or a hole, it does not diminish its value or the experiences it can provide, reflecting on the deeper significance that certain activities and places hold in our lives.
In practice
In a speech about the importance of sports in culture.
The problem with intelligent-design theory, is not that it is false but that it is not falsifiable. Not being susceptible to contradicting evidence, it is not a testable hypothesis. Hence it is not a scientific but a creedal tenet - a matter of faith, unsuited to a public school's science curriculum.
The cultivation - even celebration - of victimhood by intellectuals, tort lawyers, politicians and the media is both cause and effect of today's culture of complaint.
Correct thinkers think that 'baseball trivia' is an oxymoron: nothing about baseball is trivial.
Constitutional arguments that seem as dry as dust can have momentous consequences.
The civil forfeiture law - if something so devoid of due process can be dignified as law - is an incentive for perverse behavior: Predatory government agencies get to pocket the proceeds from property they seize from Americans without even charging them with, let alone convicting them of, crimes. Criminals are treated better than this because they lose the fruits of their criminality only after being convicted.
Actually, there is only one first question of government, and it is How should we live? or What kind of people do we want our citizens to be?
I was a westerner in Iran, an Iranian in the West. I had no identity. I didn't even know anymore why I was living.
The doctrine of immortality rests upon human affection. We love; therefore, we wish to live.
Of what good is our faith, our repentance, our baptism, and all the sacred ordinances of the gospel by which we have been made ready to receive the blessings of the Lord, if we fail, on our part, to keep the commandments.
You know, if you're an American and you're born at this time in history especially, you're lucky. We all are. We won the world history Powerball lottery...
I have heard of a man lost in the woods and dying of famine and exhaustion at the foot of a tree, whose loneliness was relieved by the grotesque visions with which, owing to bodily weakness, his diseased imagination surrounded him, and which he believed to be real. So also, owing to bodily and mental health and strength, we may be continually cheered by a like but more normal and natural society, and come to know that we are never alone.
When he found that the administrators were upset, he laughed. βDo they expect students not to be anarchists?β he said. βWhat else can the young be? When you are on the bottom, you must organize from the bottom up
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