Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
P. J. O'RourkeRead
I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.
Interpretation
What this quote means
This quote humorously suggests that people are more honest in casual settings like bars than in formal situations.
P. J. O'Rourke highlights the idea that informal environments, such as bars, can foster greater honesty in conversations. In contrast to more structured settings like briefings or books, where information might be filtered or less genuine, a bar's relaxed atmosphere encourages people to express themselves more openly, even if it's still a blend of truth and embellishment.
Themes
HonestyTruthBarsResearchCasual
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be shared in a discussion about how environments affect communication during a social event.
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
Waiting for the conspiracy theorists to tell the truth is a little like leaving the front-porch light on for Jimmy Hoffa.
Vincent BugliosiRead
Alcohol is a very necessary article. It enables Parliament to do things at eleven at night that no sane person would do at eleven in the morning.
George Bernard ShawRead
Anyone who thinks impressions of old movie actors is funny absolutely cannot be trusted. I think it's like a law of nature.
Stephen KingRead
Oh, I love critics. Because they love me. It's not a joke. They care.
PrinceRead
A crash is when your competitor's program dies. When your program dies, it is an 'idiosyncrasy'.
Guy KawasakiRead
Hungry Joe collected lists of fatal diseases and arranged them in alphabetical order so that he could put his finger without delay on any one he wanted to worry about.
Joseph HellerRead