Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the idea that citizens often have a role in perpetuating ineffective governance, particularly in a democracy.
P. J. O'Rourke's quote suggests that every government is made up of individuals who may be motivated by self-interest rather than the common good. In a democratic system, this self-interest extends to the populace, implying that the electorate, through their choices and actions, shares the responsibility for their government's shortcomings.
Themes
GovernmentDemocracyResponsibilityPoliticsCitizenship
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a political debate to emphasize the responsibility of voters.
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
My fellow Americans, all of us in this grand hall and everybody watching at home, when we vote in this election, we'll be deciding what kind of country we want to live in. If you want a winner-take-all, you're-on-your-own society, you should support the Republican ticket. But if you want a country of shared opportunities and shared responsibility, a we're-all-in-this-together society, you should vote for Barack Obama and Joe Biden.
William J. ClintonRead
Every power vested in a government is in its nature sovereign, and includes by force of the term a right to employ all the means requisite . . . to the attainment of the ends of such power.
Alexander HamiltonRead
A government, the constitution of which renders it unfit to be trusted with all the powers which a free people ought to delegate to any government, would be an unsafe and improper depositary of the NATIONAL INTERESTS.
Alexander HamiltonRead
I do not want to see the Republican party ride to political victory on the Four Horsemen of Calumny-fear, ignorance, bigotry and smear.
Margaret Chase SmithRead
In politics you must always keep running with the pack. The moment that you falter and they sense that you are injured, the rest will turn on you like wolves.
Rab ButlerRead
Political experience is political inefficacy.
Emmanuel MacronRead