William F. Buckley Jr. was one of the great personalities of the United States of the last 50 years. He was the same in private as in public: urbane, humorous and always cordial. ...

His humanity and gentlemanliness and unfailing courtesy, as well as his wit and erudition, enabled him to take positions that affronted the liberal conventional wisdom without attracting the venomous antagonism of its leaders. His close friends included such contrary spirits as John Kenneth Galbraith, Mario Cuomo and some of the Kennedys and Rockefellers.