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.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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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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The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
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Just because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
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If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it’s a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also – to do the lawn and clean the gutters.
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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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Regulation creates a moral hazard.
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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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Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.
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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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Supposedly, summer vacation happens because that’s when the kids are home from school, although having the kids home from school is no vacation. And supposedly the kids are home from school because of some vestigial throwback to our agricultural past.
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We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.
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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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Nobody is making Americans buy Chinese goods.
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Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
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There is one thing women can never take away from men. We die sooner.
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I rarely meet a politician that I don’t like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.
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Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.
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Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let’s hope so.
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No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
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Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.
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All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.
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You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.
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If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat – in other words, turn you into an adult.
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Never wear anything that panics the cat.
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Adam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
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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.
P. J. O'ROURKE