Mike Royko Quotes

#1. Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws ... It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem.

Mike Royko

#2. If God dislikes gays so much, how come he picked Michelangelo, a known homosexual, to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling while assigning Anita Bryant to go on television and push orange juice?

Mike Royko

#3. It's no coincidence that female interest in the sport of baseball has
increased greatly since the ballplay- ers swapped those wonderful
old-time baggy flannel uniforms for leotards.

Mike Royko

#4. It's much harder to be a liberal than a conservative. Why? Because it is easier to give someone the finger than a helping hand.

Mike Royko

#5. The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons.

Mike Royko

#6. Why do you think the lottery is so popular? Do you think anybody would play if the super payoff was a job on the night shift in a meat-packing plant? People play it so if they win they can be rich and idle. Like I told you years ago - if work is so good, how come they have to pay us to do it?

Mike Royko

#7. Hollywood likes to boast that it can elevate the national conscience.

Mike Royko

#8. Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax.

Mike Royko

#9. God tipped the country and all the fruits and nuts rolled west.

Mike Royko

#10. It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway', but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies.

Mike Royko

#11. There is only one way to solve the alleged crisis of the erosion of 'family values.' And that is to get right down to the root cause of the problem.

Mike Royko

#12. Newspapers, magazines and other publications have the constitutional right to be offensive, even disgusting. As evidence of that, just watch this space regularly.

Mike Royko

#13. If the regular pay was important to him, the opportunity to learn was of even greater long-range significance.

Mike Royko

#14. Reagan's approach will achieve one of the basic goals of the conservative: Things remain basically the same. The rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, or even a little poorer.

Mike Royko

#15. Hollywood is right. A good and strong movie can have a more powerful social impact than any and all political speeches or newspaper editorials and columns.

Mike Royko

#16. So, for a variety of reasons, ranging from convenience to fear to economics, people stayed in their own neighborhood, loving it, enjoying the closeness, the friendliness, the familiarity, and trying to save enough money to move out.

Mike Royko

#17. Forty years ago, we were on the tail of the Front Page era. There was a different point of view. Reporters and editors were more forgiving of public people. They didn't think they had to stick someone in jail to make a career.

Mike Royko

#18. When Michael Jordan quit, I suddenly found myself without a sports hero.

Mike Royko

#19. Whether one eats a cat or not is a personal choice, and I don't want to sway anyone one way or another. But if you do, there is one obvious cooking tip: Always remember to remove the bell from the cat's collar before cooking.

Mike Royko

#20. For some people, being free means being free to keep their feet on someone else's chest.

Mike Royko

#21. It's unnatural for people to run around the city streets unless they are thieves or victims. It makes people nervous to see someone running. I know that when I see someone running on my street, my instincts tell me to let the dog go after him.

Mike Royko

#22. I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message. I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose.

Mike Royko

#23. Anyone who gives a surgeon six thousand dollars for breast augmentation should give some thought to investing a little more in brain augmentation.

Mike Royko

#24. Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on.

Mike Royko

#25. He runs City Hall like a small family business and keeps everybody on a short rein. They do only that which they know is safe and that which he tells them to do. So many things that should logically be solved several rungs below finally come to him.

Mike Royko

#26. Go that way, past the viaduct, and the wops will jump you, or chase you into Jew town ... Polacks would stomp on you ... Micks will shower you with Irish confetti from the brickyards.

Mike Royko

#27. Contrary to popular belief. It's much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich.

Mike Royko

#28. A Pessimist sees the glass as half empty; A Cub Fan wonders when it's gonna spill.

Mike Royko

#29. Hollywood has always been political. They consider it their right and duty to tell us what is politically good and right.

Mike Royko