The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.
P. J. O'ROURKESometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.
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Woodstock had a tremendous impact on American artistic life.
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I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.
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We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren’t there.
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The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.
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Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.
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Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.
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Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.
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Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.
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If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.
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I don’t even know which end of a computer one is supposed to gaze into. I’ve never used a computer.
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Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn’t matter.
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I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.
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Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.
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I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.
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Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.
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Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.
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In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of ‘I hate strangers and anything that’s different.’
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The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.
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Never wear anything that panics the cat.
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The budget doesn’t have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn’t have much control over the budget.
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I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a ‘learning experience.’ Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I’ve done as a ‘learning experience.’ It makes me feel less stupid.
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Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.
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The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.
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The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
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Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.
P. J. O'ROURKE