P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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We did not become libertarians because we are altruists.
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No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it's probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.
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In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that's different.'
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The Tea Party has definitely increased political involvement, not only among Tea Party members but among people who oppose the Tea Party members. It's been a general stimulus.
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Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
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Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn't matter.
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It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.
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Stupid is a great force in human affairs.
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Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are - these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.
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There is one thing women can never take away from men. We die sooner.
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I have no idea if some societies, anthropologically speaking, aren't really suited for democracy. I don't think that's true.
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The problem isn't a Congress that won't cut spending or a president who won't raise taxes. The problem is an American public with a bottomless sense of entitlement to federal money.
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Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.
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No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
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It is important to remember when making jokes about women, that they are not a minority. They weren't captured on another continent and brought here in leg-irons (funny shoes, yes, but not leg-irons) and Hitler didn't blame them for Germany's loss in WWI. Therefore, you can make any kind of fun of them you want.
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Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs.
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Rahm Emanuel is, we are almost certain, a vampire.
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Detroit's industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.
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I am no stranger to loud noise. I've been to a Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels concert. I once dated a woman with two kids.
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When elites see a homeless person in the gutter, they assume he's saving a parking place.
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Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it's got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It's not pretty. But it's striking, I'll give it that. It's not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.
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You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.
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All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.
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Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.