P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Masochists are people that have pleasure confused with pain. In a world that has television confused with entertainment, doritoes confused with food, and Dan Quayle confused with a national political leader, masochists are clearly less mixed-up than the rest of us.
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The idea of a world where all people are alike - in wealth or in anything else - is a fantasy for the stupid.
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The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as 'the land where Israelis learned their manners'.
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In the wake of Animal House, all of us at the Lampoon had a lot of Hollywood opportunities. We could definitely get people to return phone calls.
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Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country.
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In a society where commonweal does not exist, there are no duties, only exactations to be avoided, and no freedoms, only privileges to be grabbed. There can be no such thing as 'public services' because nothing in the country is truly public. Everything is somebody's fief. And every fief must be exploited if the exploiter cares to survive.
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The morning meal was served in traditional socialist fashion- very slowly, with the courses out of order so that the jelly arrived half an hour after the toast and the coffee didn't come until we'd called for the check. However, it was hard to be angry at a place that had ice cream, beer, and cigarettes on its breakfast menu.
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A child growing up in an excessively safe environment may never learn that he is one - not until he gets married and has a wife to tell him so.
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Humans have trouble with economics, as you may have noticed, and not just because economic circumstances sometimes cause them to starve. Humans seem to have an innate inability to pay attention to economic principles.
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It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song.
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Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. They are, literally, selfless. A world designed for automobiles instead of people would have wider streets, larger dining rooms, fewer stairs to climb and no smelly, dangerous subway stations.
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What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.
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There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.
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I was told to hand over my disposable lighter, to prevent, I suppose, any threat of "Do what I say or I'll light this Marlboro and you'll all die - in thirty years due to inhalation of secondhand smoke."
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I'm not a tech-savvy parent. I communicate with my children via the old-media format called yelling.
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Children from the age of five to ten should watch more television. Television depicts adults as rotten SOB's given to fistfights, gunplay, and other mayhem. Kids who believe this about grownups aren't likely to argue about bedtime.
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Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.
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The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
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The foundation of collectivism is simple: There should be no important economic differences among people. No one should be too rich.
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There's no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn't invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it's possible.
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The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
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Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.
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We like to pile language on language. Hunter [ S. Thompson] was an influence on me, no doubt about it.
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These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.