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P. J. ORourke Quotes - Page 8

All Quotes Addiction Alcohol Appearance Art Authority Boat Cancer Capitalism Caring Character Charity Children Church Coffee College Comedy Communism Cooking Country Culture Dating Death Debate Democracy Divorce Drinking Dying Earth Effort Environment Exercise Family Fashion Food Free Market Fun Funny Giving Golf Growth Health Heart Heaven History Home House Inspirational Journalism Killing Language Liberalism Liberty Life Loss Love Luck Lying Mom Money Morning Office Past Pleasure Politics Pollution Poverty Purpose Quality Reading Responsibility Running Sailing Satire School Sloth Smoking Socialism Sports Students Stupidity Style Taxes Trade Virtue Waiting War Wealth Wife Wine Worry Writing

Smoking is very bad for you and should only be done because it looks so good. People who don't smoke have a terrible time finding something polite to do with their lips.

Smoking is very bad for you and should only be done because it looks so good. People who don't smoke have a terrible time finding something polite to do with their lips.

People, Smoking, Looks

P. J. O'Rourke (1983). “Modern manners”, Dell Books

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.

Ideas, Bigs, Idealism

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty”, p.256, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

I buy a tractor two years ago, and four-fifths of the tractor manual is about not tipping over, not raising the bucket high enough to hit high-tension wire... not killing yourself, basically. And in that manual, I found out - and it cost me a thousand dollars - that when the tractor is new, 10 hours into use of the tractor, you have to re-torque the lug nuts. If you don't, you will oval the holes. This is buried between the moron warnings. I never found it. I take the tractor in for its regular servicing, and they say my wheels are gone. How am I supposed to know that? "It's in the manual."

Years, Nuts, Two

Source: www.avclub.com

The French are sawed-off sissies who eat snails and slugs and cheese that smells like people's feet. Utter cowards who force their own children to drink wine, they gibber like baboons even when you try to speak to them in their own wimpy language.

Sarcastic, Children, Food

Cats possess so many of the same qualities as some poeple that it is often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.

Cat, People, Quality

There's a current notion that you should "take charge of your disease." No thanks. I'm busy. I've got cancer. I'm willing to face having cancer. I'm not willing to face having cancer with homework. I promised Dr. Pipas and Dr. Zaki that I wouldn't show up with sheaves of printouts from the Internet containing everything on Wikipedia on malignancies. They each laughed with detectable notes of relief. Although I suspect my wife has made her way into the health blog ether. Fish oil pills, raw kelp, and other untoward substances started showing up on dinner plates after I was diagnosed.

Cancer, Oil, Wife

Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. 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.

Running, Political, Liberty

"All the Trouble in the World". Book by P. J. O'Rourke, 1994.

Modern air travel means less time spent in transit. That time is now spent in transit lounges.

Funny, Humorous, Food

P.J. O'Rourke (2012). “Holidays in Hell”, p.16, Atlantic Books Ltd

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.

Funny, Humorous, Twilight

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer”, p.17, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

The great thing about starting golf in your forties is that you can start golf in your forties. You can start other things in your forties but generally your wife makes you stop them, as Bill Clinton found out.

Golf, Wife, Bills

P.J. O'Rourke (2015). “Thrown Under the Omnibus”, p.506, Atlantic Books Ltd

Any trade that is voluntarily made is mutually beneficial, by definition, and, indeed, is balanced, by definition.

Definitions, Made, Trade

I arrived in the middle of a press conference - as boring a thing to sit through if you don't know the language as it is if you do.

Funny, Journalism, Language

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About Thi”, p.235, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.

Office, World, Socialism

P.J. O'Rourke (2012). “Holidays in Hell”, p.76, Atlantic Books Ltd

One of these suburbs is actually named Stalingrad, which goes to show that the French have learned nothing about politics since they guillotined all the smart people in 1793.

Funny, Smart, People

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About Thi”, p.192, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Mankind has invested more than four million years of evolution in the attempt to avoid physical exertion. Now a group of backward-thinking atavists mounted on foot-powered pairs of Hula-Hoops would have us pumping our legs, gritting our teeth, and searing our lungs as though we were being chased across the Pleistocene savanna by saber-toothed tigers. Think of the hopes, the dreams, the effort, the brilliance, the pure force of will that, over the eons, has gone into the creation of the Cadillac Coupe de Ville. Bicycle riders would have us throw all this on the ash heap of history.

Inspirational, Dream, Thinking

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of P.J. O'Rourke”, p.126, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Each American embassy comes with two permanent features - a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas. Most demonstrators spend half their time burning Old Glory and the other half waiting for green cards.

Funny, Humorous, Old Glory

P.J. O'Rourke (2012). “Holidays in Hell”, p.18, Atlantic Books Ltd

I read good. I was an English major.

English Major, Majors

"P.J. O'Rourke Takes On 'The Wealth of Nations'". Interview with Neal Conan, www.npr.org. January 8, 2007.

The Australian language is easier to learn than boat talk. It has a vocabulary of about six words.

Funny, Humor, Vocabulary

P.J. O'Rourke (2012). “Holidays in Hell”, p.130, Atlantic Books Ltd

What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.

Hazards, Would Be, World

"Holidays in Hell". Book by P. J. O'Rourke, 1988.

The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power -even the smallest and silliest kind of power - out of the hands of ... members of a dangerous class -the class that knows what's good for us better than we do.

Government, Hands, Class

Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don't need any of those things.

Good Man, Style, Together

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People”, p.4, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.

Writing, Heart, World

P.J. O'Rourke (2009). “On The Wealth of Nations: A Book that Shook the World”, p.85, Atlantic Books Ltd

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.

People, Gardening, Want

P. J. O'Rourke (2016). “Republican Party Reptile: The Confessions, Adventures, Essays and (Other) Outrages of . . .”, p.94, Pan Macmillan

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.

Stupid, Simple, Government

P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “All the Trouble in the World: The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague, and Poverty”, p.198, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry.

Community, Important, Pork

P.J. O'Rourke (2012). “Holidays in Hell”, p.135, Atlantic Books Ltd

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