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.
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Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.
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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.
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Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
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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
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