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P. J. O'Rourke

Patrick Jake O'Rourke (born November 14, 1947 in Toledo, Ohio) is an American political satirist, journalist, and writer. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me! He is known in the United Kingdom as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s

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Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Government isn't a good way to solve problems ... [G]overnment is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. ... [G]overnment is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. ... [G]overnment is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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When it comes to taking chances, some people like to play poker or shoot dice; other people prefer to parachute jump, go rhino hunting, or climb ice floes, while still others engage in crime or marriage. But I like to get drunk and drive like a fool. Name me, if you can, a better feeling than the one you get when you're half a bottle of Chivas in the bag with a gram of coke up your nose, and a teen-age lovely pulling off her tube top in the next seat over while you're going a hundred miles an hour down a suburban sidestreet. You'd have to watch the entire Mexican air force crash-land in a liquid petroleum gas storage facility to match this kind of thrill. If you ever have much more fun than that, you'll die of pure sensory overload, I'm here to tell you.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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With Epcot Center the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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The preamble to the Constitution states We, the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquillity, provide for the common defence, promote the general welfare... It doesn't say guarantee the general welfare. And it certainly doesn't say give welfare benefits to all the people in the country who aren't doing so well even if the reason they aren't doing so well is because they're sitting on their butts in front of the TV.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Anything that makes your mother cry is fun.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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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 health care, the right to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are rations of slavery - hay and a barn for human cattle. There's 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

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Love is a driver, bitter and fierce if you fight and resist him, Easy-going enough once you acknowledge his power.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Never fight an inanimate object.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Skiing consists of wearing 3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Smoking cigarettes seems to alarm peace activists much more than voting for Reagan does.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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The Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies is supposed to have subscribed to the "Village Voice" for six years in an attempt to find out about life in America's rural areas.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 - to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any over-large concentration of like-minded individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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

– P. J. O'Rourke

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Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

– P. J. O'Rourke

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