When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O'ROURKEThe beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Thank you, Occupy Wall Street. With your vivid example of anticapitalist squalor, I’ve been able to convince all three of my children to become investment bankers.
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Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
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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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Just because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
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Regulation creates a moral hazard.
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I read good. I was an English major.
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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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In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of ‘I hate strangers and anything that’s different.’
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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.
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The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.
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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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A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It’s a promissory note that doesn’t actually promise anything. It’s not backed by gold or silver.
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Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There’s more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it’s awfully close to human.
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Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.
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I’ve got a 1990 Porsche 911. It’s just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it.
P. J. O'ROURKE