We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren’t there.
P. J. O'ROURKEPolitics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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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.
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All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.
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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.
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The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
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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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Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.
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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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The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.
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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?
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The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
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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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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.
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As a former writer for the ‘National Lampoon,’ I’ve probably contributed to the sea of sarcasm in which we live.
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In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of ‘I hate strangers and anything that’s different.’
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They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, ‘But doesn’t it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn’t it be set in New Guinea?’ And you say, ‘But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.’
P. J. O'ROURKE