By the end of the 1950s, American cars were so reliable that their reliability went without saying even in car ads. Thousands of them bear testimony to this today, still running on the roads of Cuba though fueled with nationalized Venezuelan gasoline and maintained with spit and haywire.
P. J. O'ROURKEA U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a promissory note that doesn’t actually promise anything. It’s not backed by gold or silver.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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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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Regulation creates a moral hazard.
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Never fight an inanimate object.
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You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.
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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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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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Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
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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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Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.
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A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
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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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Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
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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 C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews.
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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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Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.
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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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Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.
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The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that’s the point.
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Global warming is a fact. Now it’s up to liberals to make it a reality. Hence there is crucial importance in preventing powerful, greedy free market forces from getting in the way of worsening storms and rising sea levels. The Kyoto Accord is a good first step.
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The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.
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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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If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.
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Some people think that welfare reform should have hurt Bill Clinton with black voters.
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They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, ‘But doesn’t it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn’t it be set in New Guinea?’ And you say, ‘But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.’
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Adam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
P. J. O'ROURKE