Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote emphasizes the individuality of human beings as opposed to collective behavior in nature.
P. J. O'Rourke's quote suggests that unlike social insects such as ants or bees, humans possess unique reasoning, emotions, and experiences. It highlights the importance of individualism and personal agency, reminding us that our lives are shaped by personal choices and individual relationships rather than a collective existence.
Themes
IndividualityHuman NatureExistencePersonal AgencyCollectivism
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of individual thought in society.
More from P. J. O'Rourke
All quotes βAlways read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Similar quotes
But the problem is to make the soul into a monster
Arthur RimbaudRead
Our object in the construction of the state is the greatest happiness of the whole, and not that of any one class.
PlatoRead
Not only must we be good, but we must also be good for something.
Henry David ThoreauRead
Consciousness ... is the phenomenon whereby the universe's very existence is made known.
Roger PenroseRead
A society that admits misery, a humanity that admits war, seem to me an inferior society and a debased humanity; it is a higher society and a more elevated humanity at which I am aiming - a society without kings, a humanity without barriers.
Victor HugoRead
We kill each other over which name to call the Nameless.
Ram DassRead