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P. J. O'Rourke
195 quotes
“You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination; if you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This morning Bianca looked...her age. Here we had a not very bright, fortyish, discarded rock-star wife, trapped in the lonely hell of the formerly cute — one bummed-out show-biz lefty. I was feeling great myself, ready to turn somersaults over the Ortega defeat, full of good cheer and pleased with all the world. But then the forlorn, sagging little shape of Bianca caught my eye and, all of a sudden, I felt EVEN BETTER.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. Keep your hands to yourself, Bill. Hillary, mind your own business.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting Hillary in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money — hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A careful reading of 50 Simple Things leaves you wondering whether you're going to die from environmental disaster or intellectual annoyance. Failing either, you can worry yourself to death.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A pleasant natural environment is a good — a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty — their power and privilege — to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We were served an excellent dinner. And the next thing I know I was on my third bottle of wine expressing my disagreement with a dean over her support for the Clinton administration health-care reform plan by yelling that she was a political criminal. "Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind, goddamnit!”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Any person who has spent time outdoors actually doing something, such as hunting and fishing as opposed to standing there with a doobie in his mouth, knows nature is not intrinsically healthy.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All of Vietnam has [beautiful women] and not just singular enchantresses but huge aggregate percentages of sirens and belles. Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett ... I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say "I've got cancer" and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy?”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever's special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet: to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Crowded as the country is, is overcrowding even its main problem? Hong Kong and Singapore both have greater population densities (14.315 and 12.347 per square mile, respectively) than Bangladesh, and they're called success stories. The same goes for Monaco. In fact, the whole Riviera is packed in August, and neither Malthus nor Ehrlich have complained about the topless beaches of St. Tropez.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don't know much. Say it's ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn't ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids' families? And what is tonight's pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free— indeed, sanctimonious— way for "progressives" to be racists.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Human problems are complex. If something isn't complex it doesn't qualify as problematic. Very simple bad things are not worth troubling ourselves about.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I guess the argument of contextuality is that anything is okay as long as it's done by people who are sufficiently unlike you.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I suspect the Haitian Ministry of Health's principal contribution to health in Haiti is providing nice, healthy jobs to those Haitians with the connection to get them.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If the politics of disease are to be understood, particularly in the dreadful countries where this understanding is most needed, then the politics of total collapse have to be understood first.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die. Somalia had become just this kind of spa.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In Japan people drive on the left. In China people drive on the right. In Vietnam it doesn't matter.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Malthus,", says Vice President Al Gore in Earth in the Balance, "was right in predicting that the population would grow geometrically." Al, as the father of four children, should know.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Man has been breeding livestock for ten thousand years and has yet to come up with a monstrous sheep that can trample buildings and graze a whole golf course for breakfast.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Mankind is supposed to have evolved in the treetops. But I have examined my sense of balance, the prehensility of my various appendages, and my attitude toward standing on anything higher than, say, political principles, and I have concluded that, personally, I evolved in the backseat of a car.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Most of the research about species extinction has been conducted on islands because islands are controlled environments and scientists can get drinks with little umbrellas in them there... Island logic also tells us that an increase in habitat size means an increase in number of species. But it doesn't necessarily. You can build your bed as large as you like and still get very few people to sleep with you.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“One thing that's certain about going outdoors: When you come back inside, you'll be scratching.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs.”
P. J. O'Rourke (1947–2022) said by 2022 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source