You’re never going to read ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ and you shouldn’t, really. It’s 900 pages.
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.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
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Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.
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Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.
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It’s better to make fun of yourself because you’ve always got someone around to make fun of, and they can’t sue you.
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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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If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.
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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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Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.
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If you think health care is expensive now, just wait ’til it’s free.
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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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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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Head lice have their own animal-rights group, or may as well. The National Pediculosis Association doesn’t exactly advocate letting lice live with dignity, but it does oppose pediculicidal treatments.
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Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
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Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the Left.
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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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You can’t destroy America by destroying our elite. Think about America’s elite. Think about it down through history. Destroy our elite, and about half the time, you’re doing us a favor.
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Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
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The C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews.
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I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.
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We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.
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There isn’t much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.
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Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
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In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
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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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Liberals have invented whole college majors – psychology, sociology and women’s studies – to prove that nothing is anybody’s fault.
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Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
P. J. O'ROURKE