Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.
P. J. O'ROURKECleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes – the whole bag of tricks.
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Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
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People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
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Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.
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Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.
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The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
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Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.
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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.
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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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Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.
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You’re stupid,’ is not something even his most severe critics usually say to President Barack Obama.
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To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You’d better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.
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A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.
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Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the Left.
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Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.
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If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
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The budget doesn’t have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn’t have much control over the budget.
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Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.
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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.
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I’ve got a 1990 Porsche 911. It’s just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it.
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Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
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The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.
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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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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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Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
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Like most sensible people, you probably lost interest in modern art about the time that Julian Schnabel was painting broken pieces of the crockery that his wife had thrown at him for painting broken pieces of crockery instead of painting the bathroom and hall.
P. J. O'ROURKE