P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Back in the thirties we were told we must collectivize the nation because the people were so poor. Now we are told we must collectivize the nation because the people are so rich.

Very few governments have the money to meet the needs of their people….The private sector has most of the resources.

I think it's true - economically, you want to bake a bigger cake rather than slicing up an existing cake differently.

Throughout history, poverty is the normal condition of man. Advances which permit this norm to be exceeded — here and there, now and then — are the work of an extremely small minority, frequently despised, often condemned, and almost always opposed by all right-thinking people. Whenever this tiny minority is kept from creating, or (as sometimes happens) is driven out of a society, the people then slip back into abject poverty. This is known as "bad luck.

It's more work to create poverty, disease and disharmony than it is to create health, harmony and abundance, because perfect health, harmony and abundance are the natural order of things.

We must also know that even before liberation in 1994 there [in South Africa] were people with resources who tried to share with those who were deprived.

Nobody should be hitting lotto for 36 million dollars when we got people starving in the streets. That is not idealistic, that's just real. That is just stupid. There's no way Michael Jackson, or whoever should have thousands, millions, billions of dollars and we got people broke with two-three jobs and still can't pay bills on time. There's no way! No way these people should have planes when people don't have houses, apartments, shacks, drawers, pants!!!

There is nothing new about poverty. What is new, however, is that we have the resources to get rid of it.

To seek "causes" of poverty in this way is to enter an intellectual dead end because poverty has no causes. Only prosperity has causes.

Poverty, the existence of the poor, was the first cause of riches.

Colombia is potentially a very wealthy country. It has tremendous resources, but its wealth is highly concentrated. Most of the population lives in misery, which has led to violent confrontation throughout the century.

If poverty makes man groan, he yawns in opulence. When fortune exempts us from labor, nature overwhelms us with time.

Wealth and poverty; one is the parent of luxury and indolence, and the other of meanness and viciousness, and both of discontent.

There is no example on the planet of a successful economy with broadly shared prosperity and a shrinking, weak government.

Poverty devastates families, communities and nations. It causes instability and political unrest and fuels conflict.

I am myself impressed by the great social advantages of increasing the stock of capital until it ceases to be scarce.

There's a lot of money in wars, except in the war on poverty. Can't make any bread helping the poor.

Don't Latin Americans have the right to ask why their elected governments are being opposed and coup leaders supported?.. Poverty and hardship in large parts of Africa are preventing this from happening. Don't they have the right to ask why their enormous wealth - including minerals - is being looted, despite the fact that they need it more than others?

A rich man's war and a poor man's fight.

Forced to choose, the poor, like the rich, love money more than political liberty; and the only political freedom capable of enduring is one that is so pruned as to keep the rich from denuding the poor by ability or subtlety and the poor from robbing the rich by violence or votes.

Poverty is very good in poems but very bad in the house; very good in maxims and sermons but very bad in practical life.

When the coercive power of government is used to equalize incomes, it guarantees less prosperity across the board and spreads the misery, which is one of the many reasons Marxism and socialism have failed everywhere they've tried.

The superfluities of a rich nation furnish a better object of trade than the necessities of a poor one. It is the interest of the commercial world that wealth should be found everywhere.

Cruel irony, the poor man tormented with hunger feeds those who plead his case.

The first thing that you need to deal with is the issue of equity and poverty.