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
What this quote means
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.
Themes
GunFearImpactSocialHumor
In practice
Example use cases
In a stand-up comedy routine discussing the absurdity of everyday life.
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.
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