People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it’s simply a measurement.
P. J. O'ROURKEEverybody in the Middle East wants to explain why they’re right.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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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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When you’re a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, ‘Gee, I wouldn’t want to be doing that.’ They’re on your side.
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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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The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year’s Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you’re married to.
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The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It’s a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it’s got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It’s not pretty. But it’s striking, I’ll give it that. It’s not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.
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The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.
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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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Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.
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Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.
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The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
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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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Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid.
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People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
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There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It’s going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it’s the Democrats.
P. J. O'ROURKE