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 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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If I had been in President Obama's shoes, I would have acted more decisively and strongly against ISIS.
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I think the founding fathers, in their genius, created a system of three co-equal branches of government and a built-in system of checks and balances.
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Our ancestors were very rich and eminent people, and they left us an enormous inheritance, which we have completely forgotten, especially since the time when we began to consider ourselves the descendants of a monkey.
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Always follow your own path.
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I've also gotten messages from men and women who are not the most attractive, in their minds, or are self-conscious about their weight. They're thanking me for doing songs like 'Proud Mary' and shaking a tailfeather, because they say I seem real comfortable in my skin and it made them want to be comfortable in theirs.
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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.
