The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.
P. J. O'ROURKENever fight an inanimate object.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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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Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s box.
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Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.
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The 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.
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Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.
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The minute somebody joins a committee… they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.
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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.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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.
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Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.
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When elites see a homeless person in the gutter, they assume he’s saving a parking place.
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Thank you, Occupy Wall Street. With your vivid example of anticapitalist squalor, I’ve been able to convince all three of my children to become investment bankers.
P. J. O'ROURKE