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.
P. J. O'ROURKEPeople are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
-
The 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.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year’s Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you’re married to.
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 -
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
The body is forever teaching us lessons. There are all sorts of things that we can’t do, shouldn’t do, had better not do very often or do for too long as we get older. The body makes its presence known.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.
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 -
Just because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
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 -
Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey. Moses in effect led the tribes of Israel out of the District of Columbia, parted Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis, and wandered for forty years in Delaware.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You’d better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Every vote should carry a serial number, so that responsibility for harmful or careless use of the vote can be traced. Concealed voting should be outlawed.
P. J. O'ROURKE