The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State’s registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they’re going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can’t understand what they say.
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The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there’s a reason for that – the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent – No Child Left Behind.
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A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
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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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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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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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The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the ’70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.
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A humorist doesn’t really do that much note-taking.
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Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
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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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Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
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Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I’m not even sure we can draw lessons from them.
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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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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.
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America has to act. But, when America acts, other nations accuse us of being ‘hegemonistic’, of engaging in ‘unilateralism’, of behaving as if we’re the only nation on earth that counts. We are.
P. J. O'ROURKE