S.o.j.a Quotes

#1. The U.S. Constitution is less than a quarter the length of the owner's manual for a 1998 Toyota Camry, and yet it has managed to keep 300 million of the world's most unruly, passionate and
energetic people safe, prosperous and free.

P. J. O'Rourke

#2. Brandon's going to talk to a B-O-Y, and -"
"What?"
"That's your assignment tonight. You converse in public with a boy. You've heard of them, right? They're like girls, but with penises?

J.C. Lillis

#3. New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State's registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they're going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can't understand what they say.

P. J. O'Rourke

#4. 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.

P. J. O'Rourke

#5. The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15, we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

P. J. O'Rourke

#6. What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text.

P. J. O'Rourke

#7. If a journalist shows a facility for praise he's liable to be offered a job in public relations or advertising and the next thing you know he's got a big office, a huge salary and is living in a fine home with a lovely wife and swell kids - another career blown to hell.

P. J. O'Rourke

#8. The only time a bachelor's bed is made is when it's in the factory.

P. J. O'Rourke

#9. That's the way blacks have been encouraged to think: that we got to stick together. You've got a situation today where if a black person says he thinks O.J. Simpson's guilty, other blacks will cut their eyes at him and say, 'You ought to go somewhere and sit down and shut up.'

J. C. Watts

#10. We are endowed with a moral capacity that animals, plants, rocks-and many fervent ecologists-lack. We should not be dirty, wasteful or cruel. To do so harms others. That's wrong. Therefore we don't disembowel Bambi like the way coyotes do, we shoot him first.

P. J. O'Rourke

#11. A penny will not buy a penny postcard or a penny whistle or a single piece of penny candy. It will not even, if you're managing the U.S. Mint, buy a penny.

P. J. O'Rourke

#12. The key ingredient of politics is the idea that all of society's ills can be cured politically. It's like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried.

P. J. O'Rourke

#13. Our regulatory bodies strive to create honest dealings, fair trades, and a situation in which no one has an advantage over anyone else. But human beings aren't honest. And all trades are made because one person thinks he's getting the better of the other, and the other person thinks the same.

P. J. O'Rourke

#14. It's grossly unfair to judge Walter Payton solely on the yards he gains. He is a complete football player, better than Jim Brown, better than O.J. Simpson.

Jim Finks

#15. The old woman was not only ugly with the ugliness age brings us all but showed signs of formidable ugliness by birth - pickle-jar chin, mainsail ears and a nose like a trigonometry problem. What's more, she had the deep frown and snit wrinkles that come from a lifetime of bad character.

P. J. O'Rourke

#16. Gimme an S! A T! An O! A C! Followed by a K-H-O-L-M! What's it spell? HEAD FUCK.
- Jane

J.R. Ward

#17. Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There's more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it's awfully close to human.

P. J. O'Rourke

#18. Phil took us to the finals three out of the five years and you want to fire him and want to bring in Mike Krzyzewski? Come on, man. That's like being married to J-Lo, then dropping J-Lo for a girl that's 5-10, 480 (pounds).

Shaquille O'Neal

#19. There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It's going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it's the Democrats.

P. J. O'Rourke

#20. In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of 'I hate strangers and anything that's different.'

P. J. O'Rourke

#21. Nothing bad is going to happen to us. If we get fired, it's not failure; its a midlife vocational reassessment.

P. J. O'Rourke

#22. Fortunately, I'm married to someone who's a pretty excellent parent!

P. J. O'Rourke

#23. War will exist as long as there's a food chain.

P. J. O'Rourke

#24. 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.

P. J. O'Rourke

#25. Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box.

P. J. O'Rourke

#26. The baby boomers' politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there's been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.

P. J. O'Rourke

#27. If ever there were a place where people not only tend not to face economic facts, but it's almost their purpose not to face economic facts, it's Washington.

P. J. O'Rourke

#28. The feature article made my holy-shit-o-meter blare like a banshee

J.A. Saare

#29. Pete Seeger is a modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured man. He's a good folk singer, if you can stand folk singing. And he's such an excellent banjo player that you almost don't wish you had a pair of wire cutters.

P. J. O'Rourke

#30. 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

#31. Keeping house is as unpleasant and filthy as coal mining, and the pay's a lot worse.

P. J. O'Rourke

#32. Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you're handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when it's over.

P. J. O'Rourke

#33. There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

P. J. O'Rourke

#34. When elites see a homeless person in the gutter, they assume he's saving a parking place.

P. J. O'Rourke

#35. Jessica Simpson attended boyfriend Tony Romo's football game. The Cowboys quarterback had the worst game of his career. It's a bad year for the name Simpson. Even O. J. is pissed - he feels like they're making his name look bad.

Chelsea Handler

#36. I prayed for the city to be cleared of people, for the gift of being alone - a-l-o-n-e: which is the one New York prayer that rarely gets lost or delayed in channels, and in no time at all everything I touched turned to solid loneliness.

J.D. Salinger

#37. R-o-l-a-i-d-s: How do you spell relief? [10w]
J-a-c-k-i-n-go-f-f.

Beryl Dov

#38. I've got a 1990 Porsche 911. It's just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it.

P. J. O'Rourke

#39. To the top of the tower, to the top of the wall! Now fart away, fart away, fart away all!" Santa cried, and then the reindeer took off running over the lawn. Suddenly, they all let out a giant reindeer fart, and Santa's sleigh flew up into the air!

J.B. O'Neil

#40. Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it's got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It's not pretty. But it's striking, I'll give it that. It's not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.

P. J. O'Rourke

#41. Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.

P. J. O'Rourke

#42. A charity ball is like a dance except it's tax deductible.

P. J. O'Rourke

#43. I don't think anybody's really been successful with theorizing about value or creating a price theory.

P. J. O'Rourke

#44. The number one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S.

Joe Biden

#45. You can't destroy America by destroying our elite. Think about America's elite. Think about it down through history. Destroy our elite, and about half the time, you're doing us a favor.

P. J. O'Rourke

#46. The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to collectivists, to people who believe that wealth is best obtained by redistribution, and that message is clear and concise ... Egalitarianism is sinful; it's also cowardly.

P. J. O'Rourke

#47. As author P. J. O'Rourke puts it: Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it's cute but boring and expensive.

Timothy Ferriss

#48. There's not a woman in the book, the plot hinges on unkindness to animals, and the black characters mostly drown by Chapter 29.

P. J. O'Rourke

#49. A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'

P. J. O'Rourke

#50. America's public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation.

P. J. O'Rourke

#51. There's no such thing as a race and barely such a thing as an ethnic group. If we were dogs, we'd be the same breed ... Trouble doesn't come from Slopes, Kikes, Niggers, Spics or White Capitalist Pigs; it comes from the heart.

P. J. O'Rourke

#52. Wingardium Leviosa!" he shouted, waving his long arms like a windmill.
"You're saying it wrong," Harry heard Hermione snap. "It's Wing-gar-dium Levi-o-sa, make the 'gar' nice and long."
"You do it, then, if you're so clever," Ron snarled.

J.K. Rowling

#53. When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved.

P. J. O'Rourke

#54. It was to be a short visit for the G-shevs. More than four days in the U.S. and Raisa's VISA card bill would shatter the fragile Soviet economy.

P. J. O'Rourke

#55. Look, John's last-minute economic plan does nothing to tackle the number-one job facing the middle class, and it happens to be, as Barack says, a three-letter word: jobs. J-O-B-S, jobs.

Joe Biden

#56. Yer ticket fer Hogwarts," he said. "First o' September - King's Cross - it's all on yer ticket. Any problems with the Dursleys, send me a letter with yer owl, she'll know where to find me. . . . See yeh soon, Harry.

J.K. Rowling

#57. I think the Baby Boom does have a tendency to get its nose in everything. The Greatest Generation had a better tendency to leave people alone. Of course, they also had a better tendency to hate everybody's guts.

P. J. O'Rourke

#58. A U.S. dollar is an IOU from the Federal Reserve Bank. It's a promissory note that doesn't actually promise anything. It's not backed by gold or silver.

P. J. O'Rourke

#59. America is the world's policeman, all right
a big, dumb, mick flatfoot in the middle of the one thing cops dread most, a domestic disturbance.

P. J. O'Rourke

#60. Banning paper and plastic and making shoppers carry their groceries home in their mouths like dogs is just the thing to make a little tin humanist in the Obama West Wing think he's admiral of the Uzbek Navy.

P. J. O'Rourke

#61. The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there's a reason for that - the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent - No Child Left Behind.

P. J. O'Rourke

#62. Generally it's not a good idea to wear Banana Republic - type khaki journalist clothes in a war zone. You might look too much like something that's supposed to be shot, such as a journalist.

P. J. O'Rourke

#63. If you spend seventy-two hours in a place you've never been, talking to people whose language you don't speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don't understand, and you come back as the world's biggest know-it-all, you're a reporter.

P. J. O'Rourke

#64. If you spend 72 hours in a place you've never been, talking to people whose language you don't speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don't understand, and you come back as the world's biggest know-it-all, you're a reporter. Either that or you're President Obama.

P. J. O'Rourke

#65. Affirmative action makes employers think, 'Black woman nuclear physicist? Hah! Probably let her into Harvard 'cause they were looking for a twofer. Bet she got C's in high school practical math. Give her a job in personnel.'

P. J. O'Rourke

#66. The great apologist has to have lived large and wild. If he's going to kiss the world's boo-boos and make up, he'd better plant some bruises first. A master apologizer has to be a Lord Byron, a Rick in Casablanca, a Lee Atwater, anyway.

P. J. O'Rourke

#67. Nicole will come up in conversations where it's in a part of the conversation. Or we may be somewhere and I would tell some story about their mother and I. You know, we always honor her birthday.

O.J. Simpson

#68. So top grade's O for 'Outstanding,'" Hermione was saying, "and then there's A-"
"No, E," George corrected her, "E for 'Exceeds Expectations.' And I've always thought Fred and I should've got E in everything, because we exceeded expectations just by turning up for the exams.

J.K. Rowling

#69. Now majority rule is a precious, sacred thing worth dying for. But like other precious, sacred things ... it's not only worth dying for; it can make you wish you were dead. Imagine if all life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza.

P. J. O'Rourke

#70. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld said this week there's a good chance we never get bin Laden. bin Laden! We couldn't even get O.J.!

Jay Leno

#71. Farm policy, although it's complex, can be explained. What it can't be is believed. No cheating spouse, no teen with a wrecked family car, no mayor of Washington, D.C., videotaped in flagrante delicto has ever come up with anything as farfetched as U.S. farm policy.

P. J. O'Rourke

#72. Everybody knows this legend in kind of African-American lore. There's always somebody in your neighborhood named Orangejello or Lemonjello. And that's spelled - Orangejello is spelled O-R-A-N-G-E-J-E-L-L-O.

Jordan Peele

#73. There's a love of rhetorical skill in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden doesn't just go on tape cassettes and say, 'America sucks.' He recites poetry; he finds things that 'America sucks' rhymes with.

P. J. O'Rourke

#74. Anyhow, all mankind's ideas and interests, all human aims and motives, are exhibited, fully formed, in a three-year-old child. The kid is just operating on a smaller scale and lacks the advantage of having made enormous soft-money campaign contributions to political candidates.

P. J. O'Rourke

#75. A girl who is really pretty - whether she wraps herself in an abayah, a nun's habit, or the front hall rug - never wraps herself so that the world can't tell.

P. J. O'Rourke

#76. . . . crop restrictions not only raise the price of corn and other crops but also tend to raise farmers' total revenues and earnings." Increase your corn profit by not growing corn? Here's a wonderful kind of business where everybody can get rich if they'll just do nothing.

P. J. O'Rourke

#77. A wizard, o' course," said Hagrid, sitting back down on the sofa, which groaned and sank even lower, "an' a thumpin' good'un, I'd say, once yeh've been trained up a bit. With a mum an' dad like yours, what else would yeh be? An' I reckon it's abou' time yeh read yer letter.

J.K. Rowling

#78. Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.

P. J. O'Rourke

#79. We all know how 'modern democracies take loaves from the wealthy.' It's the slipups in the 'pass them out to the poor' department that inspire a study of Economics.

P. J. O'Rourke

#80. Journalists aren't supposed to praise things. It's a violation of work rules almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or absolving the CIA of something.

P. J. O'Rourke

#81. Iran and Iraq have been at war for five years now. The traditional present for a fifth anniversary is wood. Here's a gift suggestion: a big stick to beat some goddamned sense into their
heads.

P. J. O'Rourke

#82. Everything on a boat has a different name than it would have if it weren't on a boat. Either this is ancient seafaring tradition or it's how people who mess around with boats try to impress the rest of us who actually finished college.

P. J. O'Rourke

#83. Considering what a hot, wed dog smells like, dog stew has a surprisingly savory odor To tell the truth, it tastes pretty good, like oxtail. To be perfectly honest, it's delicious. (Anything about this to my golden retriever, and I'll punch your lights out.)

P. J. O'Rourke

#84. It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.

P. J. O'Rourke

#85. People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it's simply a measurement.

P. J. O'Rourke

#86. You'll have to leave my meals on a tray outside the door because I'll be
working pretty late on the secret of making myself invisible, which may take me almost until eleven o'clock.

S.J Perelman

#87. Nor should a man necessarily hold a door for a woman, unless it is a revolving door. It's not good manners to hold a revolving door, but it is lots of fun when other people are trapped inside.

P. J. O'Rourke

#88. But at its most official heart, the U.S. Dollar is simply the "I.O.U. a Dollar's worth of Tax credit" promise of our sovereign Federal Government.

J.D. ALT

#89. I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist's code of Olympian objectivity (and total purity of motive), I am absolved of responsibility. We journalists don't have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scurry.

P. J. O'Rourke

#90. The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It's a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.

P. J. O'Rourke

#91. A politician who commends himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to do good with other peoples' money.

P. J. O'Rourke

#92. Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let's hope so.

P. J. O'Rourke

#93. After all, what is your host's purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.

P. J. O'Rourke

#94. According to Father O'Dowd's description, the seminary catered to both ends of the religious life, training the next crop of young men taking holy orders and providing a retirement home for those closer to discovering if they'd backed the right horse.

David J. Oldman

#95. Never saw a point in showing up for jury duty. I already know I'm going to vote guilty." Ari's mouth made a tiny O, and she put her hand to her heart. "What about justice?"
"It is justice. Whoever they are, they're guilty of making me show up for jury duty.

J.C. Nelson

#96. I'm too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom's earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.

P. J. O'Rourke

#97. The difference between corporations and governments is governments have a monopoly on force. It's a lot easier to vote with your feet or your wallet than it is to change a government with your vote.

P. J. O'Rourke

#98. Global warming is a fact. Now it's up to liberals to make it a reality. Hence there is crucial importance in preventing powerful, greedy free market forces from getting in the way of worsening storms and rising sea levels. The Kyoto Accord is a good first step.

P. J. O'Rourke

#99. France in August when you can travel through the entire country without encountering a single pesky Frenchman or being bothered with anything that's open for business.

P. J. O'Rourke

#100. It's why we oppose Citizens United from that right-wing Supreme Court. In 2012, I also said the Tea Party "acted like terrorists" and called a donut shop manager in Milwaukee who wanted lower taxes a "smartass." And I said the number one issue is a three-letter word, J-O-B-S." I'm proud of who I am.

Joe Biden