Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote highlights the risks faced by journalists, especially in war zones, and the importance of self-preservation.
P. J. O'Rourke's quote reflects on the dangers that print journalists encounter in conflict situations, contrasting their ability to take cover with the more visible dangers faced by camera operators. O'Rourke humorously acknowledges his own survival instincts as a 'chicken,' suggesting that sometimes caution is key in dangerous professions, particularly in journalism where the stakes can be life and death.
Themes
JournalismCourageWarRiskSurvival
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used in a speech about the importance of safety in journalism.
More from P. J. O'Rourke
All quotes →Always 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
I have been refused entrance on the buses because I would not pay my fare at the front and go around to the rear door to enter. That was the custom if the bus was crowded up to the point where the white passengers would start occupying.
Rosa ParksRead
I find it amazing that the only group of people who are not fighting and not killing and not pillaging and not burning and not raping, and the group of people who are mostly — though not exclusively — who are keeping life going in the midst of war, are not included in the negotiating table.
Zainab SalbiRead
No, you sort of have to put that out of your mind. There's always a possibility that you can have a catastrophic failure, of course. This can happen on any flight. It can happen on the last one as well as the first one. You just plan as best you can to take care of all these eventualities, and you get a well-trained crew, and you go fly.
Gus GrissomRead
At my aunt's funeral, I promised myself that I wouldn't be bound by the belief that I'm supposed to stay in anything - whether it's a relationship, a job, a house, or a circumstance - if it makes me miserable. She gave me the courage to find my own happiness.
Jill ScottRead
I discovered that wearing the veil is not suitable for a woman who wants to work in activism and the public domain. People need to see you, to associate and relate to you. It is not stated in my religion to wear the veil; it is a traditional practice, so I took it off.
Tawakkol KarmanRead
I always liked to chase the girls. Parkinson's stops all that. Now I might have a chance to go to heaven.
Muhammad AliRead