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Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.

P. J. O'Rourke

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Again Born Cow Dairy Hunt Make Scope
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Bad Family Love Messy Pattern Wallpaper
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Carefully Child Children Concert Explain Inform Make Threaten Young
A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
P. J. O'ROURKE

Big Country Fundamental Ideas Question
There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Beyond Business Certain Complexity Fraud Legislation Rule Simply Time
Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Else Government Idea Prefer Sensible Somebody
Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Destabilize Nation Religious
I believe in God. God created the world.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Believe Create God World
If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Government Illegal Product Sell
All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Bad Change Done Sometimes
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Actually Dollar Federal Promise Research Silver
I look around my house, and everything except the kids and dogs was made in China. And I’m not sure about the kids. They have brown eyes and small noses.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Around Brown Country Dog Everything Except House Kid Look
Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Accept Blink Eye Gay Happen Marriage
Bill Clinton is not a hypocrite. If a man believes that it is just and moral to redistribute wealth, there is nothing hypocritical in his attempts to redistribute some of that wealth to himself.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Attempt Believe Hypocrite Man Moral President Redistribute
New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State’s registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they’re going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can’t understand what they say.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Independent New Poll Registered Republican Unreliable
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Adaptively Computer Little Native Odd Science Seem Social Society Strange
Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Great Hubris One Renewable Resource
If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Death Heard Shock Somebody Starved
The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Adept Avoid Even Learn More Young
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

Dangerm Charm Meet Personal Politician Rare
The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the ’70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Divorce Prior Rate Reason Relation Seventy Until Veen
When you’re a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, ‘Gee, I wouldn’t want to be doing that.’ They’re on your side.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Correspondent Do Person Reader Say That Want
Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How’d they get so rich? Because they’re free.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Country Free Nokia Phone Plywood Rich
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
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

Ask Came Children Form Go Grow Know Tell
I’m too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom’s earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Earn Earring Mom Pubescent Sensitive Some Tongue Toug Twerp
Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
P. J. O'ROURKE

Edit Simply Surrender

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.

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Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.

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