Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.
P. J. O'ROURKEDeath is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God’s grace.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
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Every vote should carry a serial number, so that responsibility for harmful or careless use of the vote can be traced. Concealed voting should be outlawed.
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Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.
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I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan.
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Why do elites hate the poor? It’s xenophobia. They don’t know any poor people – except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don’t speak English.
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The people who despise America are the editors of the ‘New Statesman.’ Their green-card applications must have been turned down.
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Let’s reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools – and use it on the teachers.
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A humorist doesn’t really do that much note-taking.
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My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow… he wasn’t evil or anything, but he was worthless.
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Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes – the whole bag of tricks.
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A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.
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Head lice have their own animal-rights group, or may as well. The National Pediculosis Association doesn’t exactly advocate letting lice live with dignity, but it does oppose pediculicidal treatments.
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Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
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Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.
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Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.
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The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.
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Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
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Liberals have invented whole college majors – psychology, sociology and women’s studies – to prove that nothing is anybody’s fault.
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Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
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There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.
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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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Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
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Thank you, Occupy Wall Street. With your vivid example of anticapitalist squalor, I’ve been able to convince all three of my children to become investment bankers.
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A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
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Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.
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Some people think that welfare reform should have hurt Bill Clinton with black voters.
P. J. O'ROURKE