P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

The dominant type of humor in the '60s was essentially defensive and self-deprecating, using humor as a shield.

P. J. O'Rourke

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Quotes to Explore

• Government, in the last analysis, is organized opinion. Where there is little or no public opinion, there is likely to be bad government.

  

  Mackenzie King
  • Bad
  • Government
  • Opinion

• But Buddy was an upper. He was happy. He loved music, and he was really happy. I don't know... I don't believe in reincarnation at all, but if all that stuff is true, then he might have been on his last time around.

  

  Waylon Jennings
  • Time
  • Music
  • Believe

• Honest communication is a rare thing.

  

  Taylor Sheridan
  • Communication
  • Honest
  • Rare

• Let my soul smile through my heart and my heart smile through my eyes, that I may scatter rich smiles in sad hearts.

  

  Paramahansa Yogananda
  • Heart
  • May
  • Soul

• I still have mixed feelings about what growing up is - this thing that happens to everyone, so I've heard.

  

  Taylor Swift
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Feelings

• Actors in general have some place in them that can be sensitive and easily damaged: not damaged in a bad way, but insecurity, because that's what it breeds, especially in females and female-lead types.

  

  Kaitlin Doubleday
  • Bad
  • Place
  • Insecurity

• Islam is a violent, I was going to say religion, but it's not a religion. It's a political system. It's a violent political system bent on the overthrow of the governments of the world and world domination. That is the ultimate aim.

  

  Pat Robertson
  • World
  • Political
  • Religion

• I purposefully try to make films in that grey area, where things are morally ambiguous. It's like life: good people do horrible things, and bad people do good things, and there's beauty in horror and horror in beauty.

  

  Harmony Korine
  • People
  • Life
  • Good

• I just do what's comfortable for me, whether it's getting fresh haircuts, or the clothes that I wear. It's simple; I'm just me. I don't really go out of my way. I do make sure my face is washed and moisturized, though.

  

  Lance Gross
  • Me
  • Simple
  • Clothes

• People know more about baseball players' contracts than they do about the policies that govern the fate of our children's lives in twenty years. Think about it. People used to say, the whole time I was growing up, 'Do you want to bring a child into this world?' That's pretty dire.

  

  Jackson Browne
  • People
  • Up
  • Time

• My stand-up is quite good now, people say. It's just like a big conversation each time. Every gig is a rehearsal.

  

  Eddie Izzard
  • People
  • Up
  • Time

• Quality that significantly exceeds the customer's expectations doesn't seem to pay off. This 'delight the customer' stuff isn't rewarding. One has to be careful about delighting customers too often, because it sort of reshapes customer expectations.

  

  Tahl Raz
  • Quality
  • Expectations

• I used to sculpt a bit as a kid.

  

  Taron Egerton
  • Kid
  • Used
  • Sculpt

• Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke
  • Done
  • Pretty
  • Respect

• For centuries, building materials were free. You want to build a house, you cut down some trees. But we haven't been thinking about the cost to the planet.

  

  Dan Phillips
  • Thinking
  • House
  • Free

• I have two daughters: One an open book, one a locked box. So the question of privacy is a challenging one. How much do kids need? How much should we give? How do we prepare them to live in a world where the very notion of privacy opens a generational chasm?

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • World
  • Live
  • Book

• I've always been motivated more by negative comments than by positive ones. I know what I do well. Tell me what I don't do well.

  

  Abby Wambach
  • Me
  • Positive
  • Motivated

• One of the things that's frustrated me as a deep-sea explorer is how many animals there probably are in the ocean that we know nothing about because of the way we explore the ocean.

  

  Edith Widder
  • Deep
  • Sea
  • Ocean

• I either write the book or sell the jewels. And I'm kinda sentimental about the jewels.

  

  Ava Gardner
  • Write
  • Sentimental
  • Jewels

• Down the Woodstock Road towards them an elderly, abnormally thin man was pedalling, his thin white hair streaming in the wind and sheer desperation in his eyes. Immediately behind him, running for their lives, came Scylla and Charybdis; behind them, a milling, shouting rout of undergraduates, with Mr Adrian Barnaby (on a bicycle) well in the van; behind them, the junior proctor, the University Marshal, and two bullers, packed into a small Austin car and looking very elect, severe and ineffectual; and last of all, faint but pursuing, lumbered the ungainly form of Mr Hoskins.

  

  Edmund Crispin
  • University
  • Desperation
  • Streaming

• All anything takes, really, is confidence.

  

  Rachel Ward
  • Confidence
  • Really
  • Anything

• I'm over being a pop star. I don't wanna be a hot girl. I wanna be iconic.

  

  Beyonce Destiny's Child
  • Girl
  • Star
  • Feminist

• Quite frankly, I am not very comfortable in chitchat. When I go to board meetings, I arrive two minutes before and leave when it's over. I don't stay for lunch or go early and have coffee.

  

  Louis V. Gerstner, Jr.
  • Coffee

• The dominant type of humor in the '60s was essentially defensive and self-deprecating, using humor as a shield.

  

  P. J. O'Rourke