P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
Quotes to Explore
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Jamestown changed the world in many ways, but perhaps it shaped our nation most profoundly the day Africans arrived. I can't think of a more relevant place to talk about the issues facing our community today than the place where African culture became American culture.
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I discovered television is a great way to deal with the chaos of new motherhood. I would put the babies to bed and get lost in a trashy reality show.
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For anyone who works in front of an audience there is no thrill quite like that of feeling and hearing the evidence of the audience members' enjoyment. Laughter and applause really are powerful.
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The mark of all good art is not that the thing done is done exactly or finely, for machinery may do as much, but that it is worked out with the head and the workman's heart.
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I'm the most Colombian of the Colombians, even though I've lived 47 years outside of Colombia. I've lived 13 years in New York, and I never did a painting about New York. I've lived in France more than 30 years, and I've never painted Paris.
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Life is a canvas of many strokes where shades from different palettes meet into a picture so concrete that some forget it is their own, so become framed themselves.
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Very ambitious startups often take a long time to work - or sometimes they take a very long time to look ambitious.
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I've performed Schoenberg's 'Pierrot lunaire' many times.
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I didn't make any money from my writing until much later. I published about 80 stories for nothing. I spent on literature.
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If you're a novelist, as I am in real life, you're usually so desperate for any kind of feedback.
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I'm very spiritual. I meditate every day. I don't know if that's surprising or not, but I've been doing that since I was 16 every day, so that's like kind of my thing. I'm really a hippie-chick at heart.
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No one can become fully aware of the very essence of another human being unless he loves him.
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Pure geometrical regularity gives a certain pleasure to men troubled by the obscurity of outside appearance. The geometrical line is something absolutely distinct from the messiness, the confusion, and the accidental details of existing things.
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Writing about 2,000 words in three hours every morning, 'Casino Royale' dutifully produced itself. I wrote nothing and made no corrections until the book was finished. If I had looked back at what I had written the day before I might have despaired.
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This is my homeland no one can kick me out.
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The United States being a limited form of government, one of the restrictions to which it is subject is in regard to its power to levy taxes. The States may levy them for a great many purposes for which Congress cannot, because to the States belong all of the powers not delegated to Congress.
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On the one hand, parents want their children to swim expertly in the digital stream that they will have to navigate all their lives; on the other hand, they fear that too much digital media, too early, will sink them.
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A team without hope fizzles: no flameout, no fire.
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The social stock of knowledge differentiates reality by degrees of familiarity... my knowledge of my own occupation and its world is very rich and specific, while I have only very sketchy knowledge of the occupational worlds of others.
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Forgiveness is a form of gratitude. When we forgive others, we show them the mercy that we have often received and been thankful for.
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My friend Jerry Falwell was the one who said it, and he was a guest on my show, and it's hard to take the blame for everybody who shows up on your show.
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The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages; and unless some of its missionaries penetrate there, and erect banking houses and other pious shrines, there is no knowing how long the inhabitants may remain in their present state of contented poverty.
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But when others suggested that the poor should not simply be the objects of these programs but also the subjects - that they should be actively involved in shaping the programs, making decisions about how to spend the money etc. - some of the previous supporters reconsidered.
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To blame the existence of al Qaeda on poverty like Egypt's is a slur on the poor.
