Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The current state of political discourse makes it difficult to distinguish between candidates based on their qualities, as they all seem flawed.
In this quote, P. J. O'Rourke critiques the state of political discourse, suggesting that the negativity and flaws in presidential candidates have become so pervasive that discerning one candidate's weaknesses from another's has become an impossible task. The metaphor of 'stench' highlights the morally questionable nature of modern politics, where all candidates appear equally untrustworthy.
Themes
PoliticsCandidatesDiscourseNegativityTrust
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a political debate to highlight the flaws in all candidates.
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
Neither the United States nor Israel has the capacity to impose a unilateral solution in the Middle East.
Zbigniew BrzezinskiRead
Our 'neoconservatives' are neither new nor conservative, but old as Bablyon and evil as Hell.
Edward AbbeyRead
Good economics is good politics.
Paul KeatingRead
In every society in human history, including the United States, those in power seek to imbue themselves with the attributes of religion and patriotism as a way of getting greater support for their policy and insulating themselves from any criticism.
George J. MitchellRead
What is it but a cunningly devised scheme to take from one State and to give to another - to replenish the treasury of some of the States from the pockets of the people of the others; in reality, to make them support the governments and pay the debts of other States as well as their own?
John C. CalhounRead
If there are men in this country big enough to own the government of the United States, they are going to own it.
Woodrow WilsonRead