Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
Interpretation
Society's real issues stem from human traits, not substances.
In this quote, P. J. O'Rourke argues that societal problems are not primarily caused by drugs or alcohol, but rather by negative human qualities such as ignorance, greed, and a desire for power. He suggests that addressing these intrinsic issues might be more beneficial than focusing on substance use, which often distracts from the root causes of our troubles.
In practice
This quote could be referenced in a discussion on societal reform.
Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
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.
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
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.
Talent is perhaps nothing other than successfully sublimated rage.
Usually, when you are an ethnic person or a trans person, in your average, everyday, unsophisticated television show, you are there for that reason. And they clearly justify and overexplain why. You very rarely see a transgender actor playing the part of a grocery-store clerk without having to say, 'Oh, look at that trans person.'
A prophet is not someone with special visions, just someone blind to most of what others see
There is scarcely anything more important in the government of men than the exact - I will ever say pedantic - observance of the regular forms by which the guilt or innocence of accused persons is determined.
What I wanted to get at is the value difference between pornographic playing-cards when you're a kid, and pornographic playing-cards when you're older. It's that when you're a kid you use the cards as a substitute for a real experience, and when you're older you use real experience as a substitute for the fantasy.
Spaces devoted to Hannibal Lecter’s earliest years differ from the other archives in being incomplete. Some are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted attic shards held together by blank plaster. Other rooms hold sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark and lit in flashes. Pleas and screaming fill some places on the grounds where Hannibal himself cannot go. But the corridors do not echo screaming, and there is music if you like.
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