Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.
P. J. O'ROURKEJust because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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When you’re a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, ‘Gee, I wouldn’t want to be doing that.’ They’re on your side.
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Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
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Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.
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I was very much in favor of the Iraq invasion.
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My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow… he wasn’t evil or anything, but he was worthless.
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Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.
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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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Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.
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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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Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.
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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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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.
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There 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.
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Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.
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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.
P. J. O'ROURKE