America wasn’t founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.
P. J. O'ROURKEYou know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.
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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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No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it’s probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.
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Regulation creates a moral hazard.
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I read good. I was an English major.
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There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
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Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
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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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If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama.
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There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.
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The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
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Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
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The best and brightest don’t go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
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I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion.
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No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
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Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God’s infinite mercy, a last resort.
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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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Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There’s more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it’s awfully close to human.
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The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.
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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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If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.
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There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees.
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Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.
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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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Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.
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As a former writer for the ‘National Lampoon,’ I’ve probably contributed to the sea of sarcasm in which we live.
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