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Everybody with a gun has a checkpoint in Lebanon. And in Lebanon, you'd be crazy not to have a gun. Though, I assure you, all the crazy people have guns, too.
P. J. O'Rourke
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If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words 'I don't know.'
P. J. O'Rourke
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In the language of politics, there is only one translation for the phrase 'hope and change,' to wit: 'big, fat government.'
P. J. O'Rourke
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Detroit is beautiful - though you probably have to be a child of the industrial Midwest, like me, to see it.
P. J. O'Rourke
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The District of Columbia is an extreme example of disconnect between financial input and educational outcome. Unfortunately, extreme is not the same as abnormal.
P. J. O'Rourke
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People will tell you anything but what they do is always the truth.
P. J. O'Rourke
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I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Democrats hate America being a world power because world power gives power to the nation instead of to Democrats.
P. J. O'Rourke
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As a longtime former resident of 15 years in Washington, I wish that everybody would stay off the Mall with their political cause so that we can get out there, you know, and play flag football or Frisbee, or walk the dog or something - you know, which is, you know, what the National Mall should be for, in my personal opinion.
P. J. O'Rourke
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The purpose of sports - even foreign sports - is not to bore people.
P. J. O'Rourke
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The most futuristic aspect of the House of the Future was that it was made almost entirely of plastic.
P. J. O'Rourke
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They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'
P. J. O'Rourke
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My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Israel is slightly smaller than New Jersey. Moses in effect led the tribes of Israel out of the District of Columbia, parted Chesapeake Bay near Annapolis, and wandered for forty years in Delaware.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Biotechnology is a worry. What if they take genetic material from wet noodles and blowfish and splice it into politician chromosomes and create a Clinton administration?
P. J. O'Rourke
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You can keep the dining room clean by eating in the kitchen.
P. J. O'Rourke
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America's public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation.
P. J. O'Rourke
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I covered the Lebanese civil war. I could see a place that had once been prosperous and now was impoverished. I'm not seeing that in America.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Adam Smith is misread as being amoral precisely because people don't read his first book, because they don't read 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments.'
P. J. O'Rourke
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Simply because something is a populist movement doesn't make it either good or bad.
P. J. O'Rourke
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A firm, hearty handshake gives a good first impression, and you'll never be forgiven if you don't live up to it.
P. J. O'Rourke
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I think that humor has become a principle means of communication among Americans about politics.
P. J. O'Rourke
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I think the Baby Boom does have a tendency to get its nose in everything. The Greatest Generation had a better tendency to leave people alone. Of course, they also had a better tendency to hate everybody's guts.
P. J. O'Rourke
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After all, what is your host's purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
P. J. O'Rourke
