If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
-
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
The baby boomers’ politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there’s been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Supposedly, summer vacation happens because that’s when the kids are home from school, although having the kids home from school is no vacation. And supposedly the kids are home from school because of some vestigial throwback to our agricultural past.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Russians not only vehemently despise blacks, they believe Africa begins at the Ukraine border.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
I rarely meet a politician that I don’t like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Let’s reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools – and use it on the teachers.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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'ROURKE -
The C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
The minute somebody joins a committee… they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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?
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Globalization is simply opening the free marketplace to encompass the entire world.
P. J. O'ROURKE