Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.
P. J. O'ROURKEHumans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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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The best and brightest don’t go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
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I 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'ROURKE -
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.
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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Let’s reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools – and use it on the teachers.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It’s going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it’s the Democrats.
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You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.
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The 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?
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The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that’s the point.
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Political leaders are expert at saying nothing.
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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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Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
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Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God’s infinite mercy, a last resort.
P. J. O'ROURKE