P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.
Quotes to Explore
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Knowledge is invariably a matter of degree: you cannot put your finger upon even the simplest datum and say this we know.
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Inside every adult male is a denied little boy.
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At times, it seems as if the only women effortlessly balancing their jobs, kids, husbands and homes are the ones on TV.
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I'm for absolute autonomy of the individual, and an adult, competent woman has absolute autonomy. It's her choice.
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In writing a little tragedy, 'The Gaol Gate,' I made the scenario in three lines, 'He is an informer; he is dead; he is hanged.' I wrote that play very quickly.
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Winning a gold medal is not easy but I believed in myself, especially over the last four years.
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I'm kind of a sucker for the retro-diagnoses.
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In most organizations, change comes in only two flavors: trivial and traumatic. Review the history of the average organization and you'll discover long periods of incremental fiddling punctuated by occasional bouts of frantic, crisis-driven change.
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I was very rebellious.
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I have a terrible fear of travel. Just before we go, I start to panic and tell my wife I don't want to go. It's ridiculous. But actually it's only when it's somewhere I've not been to before.
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I think everybody can identify, you know, with this sort of struggle to decide for yourself who you are, you know, and what your place in life is.
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War triggers unforeseeable military dynamics and sets off massive political shocks, creating new problems as well as new opportunities.
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If the people don't want to come out to the ballpark, nobody's going to stop them.
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Sometimes I sit down to dinner with people and I realize there is a massive military machine surrounding us, trying to kill the people I'm having dinner with.
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Too many pieces of music finish too long after the end.
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Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.
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Beauty is our weapon against nature; by it we make objects, giving them limit, symmetry, proportion. Beauty halts and freezes the melting flux of nature.
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Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed contempt and abhorrence are due to it.
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For peace is not mere absence of war, but is a virtue that springs from, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
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But what is liberty without wisdom, and without virtue? It is the greatest of all possible evils; for it is folly, vice, and madness, without tuition or restraint.
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It’s not only corruption that distorts the utopian impulse when it begins to take some specific social shape. The prospect of more freedom stirs anxiety. We want it, but we fear it; it goes against our most deeply ingrained Judeo-Christian definitions of morality and order. At bottom, utopia equals death is a statement about the wages of sin.
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Peace purchased at the cost of any part of our national integrity is fit only for slaves, and even when purchased for such a price it is a delusion, for it cannot last.
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I have no particular inspiration, but I do find Anushka Sharma, Deepika Padukone and Kangana Ranaut amazing.
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Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.
