The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that’s the point.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe idea of a stag hunt evokes chivalry – knights in jerkins and hose, ladies on sidesaddles with wimples and billowing dresses, a white stag symbolizing something-or-other, and Robin Hood getting in the way. An actual stag hunt is more like a horseback meeting of a county planning commission.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
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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 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
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I rarely meet a politician that I don’t like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.
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The perpetuation of slavery, the exile and extermination of American Indians, and the passage of Jim Crow laws weren’t carried out at the bidding of a few malefactors of great wealth.
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Adam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
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Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.
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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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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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Just because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
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People will tell you anything but what they do is always the truth.
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There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.
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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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Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it’s got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It’s not pretty. But it’s striking, I’ll give it that. It’s not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.
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Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.
P. J. O'ROURKE