Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule.
Interpretation
The quote humorously highlights the stark contrast between the small size of a gun's barrel and the significant impact it has on a person's life.
P. J. O'Rourke’s quote plays on the irony of how a small physical object, like the barrel of a gun, can have such a profound influence on someone's life and relationships. It suggests that the fear and danger associated with firearms can drastically alter one's social interactions and priorities, underscoring the weight of seemingly minor things that can have major consequences.
In practice
In a stand-up comedy routine discussing the absurdity of everyday life.
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.
Whereupon a strange euphoria came over me. Not only was I exiled, paralyzed, mute, half deaf, deprived of all pleasures, and reduced to the existence of a jellyfish, but I was also horrible to behold. There comes a time when the heaping up of calamities brings on uncontrollable nervous laughter - when, after a final blow from fate, we decide to treat it all as a joke.
I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.
I would tell myself that I was about to address the largest mass assembly of idiots ever gathered in the history of mankind.
I don't know much about being a millionaire, but I'll bet I'd be darling at it.
As a comedian, I found this thing, this profession, that suits my mind and life force. To drop it to do something else? I just don't get that.
Whoever named it necking was a poor judge of anatomy.
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