The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
P. J. O'ROURKEI don’t even know which end of a computer one is supposed to gaze into. I’ve never used a computer.
P. J. O'ROURKEYou can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe baby boomers’ politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there’s been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.
P. J. O'ROURKEIf 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.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe body is forever teaching us lessons. There are all sorts of things that we can’t do, shouldn’t do, had better not do very often or do for too long as we get older. The body makes its presence known.
P. J. O'ROURKEThere is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as ‘caring’ and ‘sensitive’ because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money.
P. J. O'ROURKEGovernment proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?
P. J. O'ROURKEI like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.
P. J. O'ROURKEI’m old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.
P. J. O'ROURKEI look around my house, and everything except the kids and dogs was made in China. And I’m not sure about the kids. They have brown eyes and small noses.
P. J. O'ROURKEAll change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.
P. J. O'ROURKEThey 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.’
P. J. O'ROURKEAdam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
P. J. O'ROURKEPolitical leaders are expert at saying nothing.
P. J. O'ROURKE