P. J. O'Rourke - Politics Quotes

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Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

P. J. O'Rourke
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
How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?

P. J. O'Rourke
Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

P. J. O'Rourke
When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead so doing something worthwhile for his country. So maybe he owes all of us an apology...

P. J. O'Rourke
I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.

P. J. O'Rourke
People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs.

P. J. O'Rourke
Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who's out in front of nobody? Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.

P. J. O'Rourke
There's nothing more oily and cynical in politics than telling the truth.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke