You’re never going to read ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ and you shouldn’t, really. It’s 900 pages.
P. J. O'ROURKEAdam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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 -
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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Rich people don’t like to be in the military. The shoes are ugly and the uniforms itch. Rich people don’t go in much for revolution or terrorism, either.
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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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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.
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Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
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Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the Left.
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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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Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.
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The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work and then they get elected and prove it.
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Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.
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Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.
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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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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