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P. J. O'Rourke

P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

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Famous P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

“.......the poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn't work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship Satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it's warm there in the winter.”

PeopleThinkingMenWorldWantGivingMadeRunningWealthPoorResultsPovertyHellRichEconomicWorshipEconomicsRewardsWinterWarmReformSatanProgressiveCommunistWant UMarxismPitsSlidesGo To HellBad ManPerditionRedistribution Of Wealth
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“Most of us had never seen a sober redneck before, and we have the Reagan Landslide to testify that none of us ever wants to see one again. It was a horrifying apparition. And ever since Jimmy Carter, all of us rednecks have had to be very careful to be drunk rednecks lest we turn into some kind of awful creature with big buck teeth and a State Department full of human-rights yahoos.”

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Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.”

PeopleWantShouldLooksModernPolicyForeign PolicyGardeningRegulationModern LifeConfinedBicycleBedtimeZealotUnicefAmerican Foreign Policy
Book:Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of . . .
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“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.”

IfsWantShouldGovernmentForceWishNaturalPayMoralEnvironmentLaborPhilosophicalStealingLuxuryPleasantGood TimesCashWant SomethingNatural Environment
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“[Kurt] Vonnegut once said, if you ever want to know who somebody is... Like you look at Richard Nixon, or Adolf Hitler, or Ralph Nader, or anybody who seems like a difficult person to understand, and is therefore not part of the pattern of human behavior. Think about who they were in high school, and they will explain themselves to you. So we got a hold of, like, 50 high-school yearbooks, including my mom's from 1925 or something, and we discovered that they're all the same.”

IfsThinkingKnowsWantHumansLooksPersonsSaidSeemsSchoolDifficultLike YouMomBehaviorHigh SchoolIncludingPatternsMy MomHuman BehaviorYearbookHigh School Yearbook
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“I'd known the people at Rolling Stone for a while. I'd gone to them with a piece I'd done on Beirut for Vanity Fair that Vanity Fair didn't want to publish, because they said I was making fun of death... This was Tina Brown.But they paid me for it. So I've got this big chunk of a piece, and Rolling Stone liked it, but they thought it was a little dated. But then they called me back and asked me to do a similar piece about the Turks and Caicos Islands, where the whole government had been arrested for dope smuggling. That was fun.”

PeopleWantLittlesSaidDoneWholeBigsGovernmentFunKnownGonePiecesFairsStonesPaidVanityIslandsBrownRollingThey SaidPublishArrestedDopeRolling StonesChunksBeirutVanity FairSmuggling
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money - if a gun is held to his head.”

PeopleIfsWantTryingWellsGovernmentLibertyVirtueWillingPridePoliticianGunProgramEconomicsCharityCaringLibertarianSensitiveVotersLibertarianismFreedom And LibertyFreedom LibertyCharitableAdvocatingCompulsoryGovernment ProgramsWilling To Try
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

WantHelpingEarthMotherFamilyMomRoutineDishesHappy Mothers DayMother's LoveBest MotherInspirational MothersMothers Day InspirationalInspirational MotherhoodLove For My MotherMom Knows Best
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“In the end we beat them with Levi's 501 jeans. Seventy-two years of communist indoctrination and propaganda was drowned out by a three-ounce Sony Walkman. A huge totalitarian system...has been brought to its knees because nobody wants to wear Bulgarian shoes. Now they're lunch, and we're number one on the planet.”

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Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“We're told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We're told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it's hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald's from a speeding train. And we're told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?”

WantShouldYearsKindHardDiesCausesCitiesLibertyMillionsStreetsCarMassHundredSittingYears AgoWindowHorseTrainCancerOilLibertarianNineLibertarianismPollutionReplacedEightyFeverTransportationMcdonaldsAnklesSpeedingCity StreetsOld CarTyphoid
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting a high-powered coporate lawyer - 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.”

IfsThinkingWantCareWaitingCostClintonLawyerAdministrationHealth CareExpensiveCheaperYale
Book:Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut
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“Money is preferable to politics. It is the difference between being free to be anybody you want and to vote for anybody you want. And money is more effective than politics both in solving problems and in providing individual independence. To rid ourselves of all the trouble in the world, we need to make money. And to make money, we need to be free.”

WorldWantNeedsProblemIndividualDifferencesTroubleVoteIndependenceMaking MoneyProvidingProblem SolvingBeing FreeIndividual Independence
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“If libertarianism were easy to explain, and it weren't easy to exaggerate the effects of libertarianism, I think it would have been done already. Many many very intelligent people have applied themselves to crafting an agenda that people could grab ahold of. But the problem of course is that libertarianism isn't political. It is kind of anti-political. It wants to take a lot of things out of the political arena.”

PeopleIfsThinkingWantKindHas BeensDoneProblemPoliticalCoursesEasyEffectsIntelligentAgendasLibertarianismArenaAnti Political
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“Wealth is, for most people, the only honest and likely path to liberty. With money comes power over the world. Men are freed from drudgery, women from exploitation. Businesses can be started, homes built, communities formed, religions practiced, educations pursued. But liberals aren't very interested in such real and material freedoms. They have a more innocent - not to say toddlerlike - idea of freedom. Liberals want the freedom to put anything into their mouths, to say bad words and to expose their private parts in art museums.”

PeopleMenWorldWantArtIdeasRealHomeCommunityWealthLibertyPathHonestMaterialsMouthsBuiltInnocentMuseumsExploitationPursuedDrudgeryBad WordPrivate Parts
Book:Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer
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“Think of what big governments have gotten up to in this century : not one, but two world wars, the gulag, the holocaust, aerial bombing of civilian population centers, the Berlin Wall, nuclear explosions, the post office. A wicked individual might want these, but he wouldn't have the cash and connections to get them. A villainous corporation could afford them but has to market the products. The Vietnam draft would be a tough sell for even the most fiendish businessmen. "Get shot! Get killed! Get diseases from foreign women who despise you in their hearts!"”

ThinkingWorldWantHeartTwoWarBigsGovernmentMightWould BeIndividualCenturyProductsWallOfficeDiseaseShotsToughConnectionsSellsPopulationNuclearPostsCorporationsWar Of The WorldsWickedVietnamDespiseCashHolocaustBusinessmanExplosionsCiviliansBerlinBombingBig GovernmentTwo WorldsPost OfficeBerlin WallGulags
Author:P. J. O'Rourke
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“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.”

WantTwoInterestGroupsSpecialBearsPoliticianBiggerPressurePressesAgendasTemporaryWhimBureaucratsSpecial InterestsFads
Book:All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty
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“I suspect the soviets never did want to use those bombs. The most Stalinist of Soviet hard-liners - Stalin, for example - must have realized a nuclear war would be a hard thing to clean up after.”

WantWarHardUseWould BeFunnyExampleHumorousCleanNuclearRussiaBombsSuspectsSovietHard ThingsNuclear War
Book:Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government
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