P. J. O'Rourke Quotes About Mankind

Quotes about: Mankind

• I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners - two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  War, Two, Tanks

  "Holidays in Hell". Book by P. J. O'Rourke, 1989.

• Now for good or ill, California is the place where trends tend to be set in Western civilization - if civilization indeed it is. California, for several generations now, has been the newest, biggest, most experimental place in the newest, biggest, most experimental part of liberal Western capitalism - which is itself a new experiment for mankind.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Civilization, California, America

• Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history, mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Race, Government, Wind

  P.J. O'Rourke (2015). “Thrown Under the Omnibus”, p.253, Atlantic Books Ltd

• 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

  Children, Humorous, Kids

  P. J. O'Rourke (2015). “Thrown Under the Omnibus: A Reader”, p.722, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

• 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

  Running, Political, Liberty

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

• 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.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  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.

• Mankind is supposed to have evolved in the treetops. But I have examined my sense of balance, the prehensility of my various appendages, and my attitude toward standing on anything higher
  than, say, political principles, and I have concluded that, personally, I evolved in the backseat of a car.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Attitude, Car, Political

  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.134, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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