P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Journalists aren't supposed to praise things. It's a violation of work rules almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or absolving the CIA of something.
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[Wave of bestselling conservative commentators] it's kind of like reading The Power Of Positive Thinking, or any other advice or how-to book. All they do is reassure people of their basic opinions, and then they can continue to act like they've always acted. I'd say it's time to move on to something else, but I don't know what it would be.
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Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.
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On Friday, June 12, 1992, 110 heads of state gathered at Riocentro. They were indistinguishable in dress and deportment. Where was biodiversity when we needed it?
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China is trying to become America without democracy while America is trying to become France without cheese calories.
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Australia is not very exclusive. On the visa application they still ask if you've been convicted of a felony - although they are willing to give you a visa even if you haven't been.
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Moore's new book, Dude, Where's My Country?, contains ten chapters of fulminations convincing the convinced. However, Moore does include one chapter on how to argue with a conservative. As if. Approached by someone like Michael Moore, a conservative would drop a quarter in Moore's Starbucks cup and hurriedly walk away.
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In the past a man was expected to give his seat on a bus to a woman. Today it would be much more courteous for that man to give her his job.
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A charity ball is like a dance except it's tax deductible.
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The most extraordinary change in Moscow was Arbat Street, the USSR's first pedestrian mall. Of course, there's something a little sad about a pedestrian mall in a nation where few people own cars- the whole damn country's a pedestrian mall.
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Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians.
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All religious believers should be licensed to make sure that they are competent to hold opinions and viewpoints and that they don't believe in just any old thing, such as creationism or a flat tax.
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Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.
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The Chinese had gunpowder, but it didn't occur to them to put it in a gun. They possessed the compass but didn't go anywhere. They invented paper, printing, and a written form of their language, but hardly anyone in China was taught to read.
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Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.
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I've never been able to get it straight about what these people who are worried about the trade deficit are worried about.
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Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.
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Neither conservatives nor humorists believe man is good. But left-wingers do.
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There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
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Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking.
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In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election
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In Japan people drive on the left. In China people drive on the right. In Vietnam it doesn't matter.
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Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.
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There are lots of levels of fear and complaint about the government getting involved in business. First and foremost, of course, is incompetence.