P. J. O'Rourke Quotes About Economics

Quotes about: Economics

• It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Effort, Sloth

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Parliament of Whores: A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”, p.36, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Gun, Rights, People

  "The Liberty Manifesto". P. J. O'Rourke 's Speech for the opening of the Cato Institute's headquarters in Washington, D.C., May 6, 1993.

• If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Inspirational, Humor, Thinking

  P. J. O'Rourke (2007). “Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut”, p.228, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

• .......the poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn't work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship Satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it's warm there in the winter.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Running, Winter, Men

  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.15, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

• You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. ... Government contains impure ingredients - as anybody who's looked at Congress can tell you. ... government practices deceptive advertising. And the merest glance at the federal budget is enough to convict the government of perjury, extortion, and fraud. ... in a nutshell: government should be against the law. Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Law, Practice, Jail

• You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Giving Money, People, Libertarian

  P.J. O'Rourke (1991). “PARLIAMENT OF WHORES A Lone Humorist Attempts to Explain the Entire U.S. Government”

• 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. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money - if a gun is held to his head.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Pride, Caring, Gun

  "Why I Am a Conservative". Book by P. J. O'Rourke, 1996.

• 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

  Believe, Years, America

  P. J. O'Rourke (2011). “Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics”, p.160, Pan Macmillan

• Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Zero, Thinking, Obsession

  Interview with Colin Powell, www.theatlantic.com. September, 2004.

• The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Writing, Heart, World

  P.J. O'Rourke (2009). “On The Wealth of Nations: A Book that Shook the World”, p.85, Atlantic Books Ltd

• Humans have trouble with economics, as you may have noticed, and not just because economic circumstances sometimes cause them to starve. Humans seem to have an innate inability to pay attention to economic principles.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Inability, Principles, Attention

  P. J. O'Rourke (2011). “Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics”, p.6, Pan Macmillan

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