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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.

P. J. O'Rourke

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Alcohol Anyway Fundamental Look Source Tets Trouble
Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Children Everybody Except Know People Raise
Woodstock had a tremendous impact on American artistic life.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Artistic Country Impact Life Tremendous Woodstock
The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Behave Four Go Look Normal Reverse Ring Three Weider
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Carry Country Crow Exile Extermination Law Passage Perpetuation Savery
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

Bright Feel Good Government Look Quit Side
Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Election Explosion Positive Right Started
If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it’s a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also – to do the lawn and clean the gutters.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Ask Children Clean Cook Down Government Hold Problem Solve
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

Come Creep Duty Enfeeble Evil Human Law Plan Rule
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Advocate Charity Compulsory Government Merely Politician Virtue
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Buy Control First Legislator Sell Sold
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'ROURKE

Behind Bench Election House Official Seat Senate Chair Whole
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

Done Endless Foreigner God Like Lousy Party Politics School Some Thing Wrong
As a former writer for the ‘National Lampoon,’ I’ve probably contributed to the sea of sarcasm in which we live.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Former Live National Sarcasm Seam Probably Writer
The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Atomic Bed Big Bomb Century Idea Test
Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Business Cancer Country Nice Place Show Southern Spread
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

Always Build Machinery Once One Political Remember Rum
Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes – the whole bag of tricks.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Black Church Classical English People Preach Scheme Speak Troop
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

Behaviour Drunk Ever Holiday New Proper Season Yera
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Brilliant Everything Midwest Most Notice Proposal Satire Straightforward Time
I’m old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Dirty Enough Now Old Over Remember
I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Automobile Business Country Remember Shift Toward
Death is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God’s grace.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Death Enough Escape God Help Important Jeep Son Therefore Wrong
Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God’s infinite mercy, a last resort.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Endless Foreigner God Lousy Politics Right Wrong
There isn’t much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.
P. J. O'ROURKE

More Much Outside Print Room View
Adam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Fact Failure Forces Huge Industrial People Revolution
Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Catch Contemporary Country English Flourish Phrase

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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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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Popular Authors

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