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"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it," Santayana said, in one of those moments of fatuousness that come to even the most detached of philosophers. It goes double for those who can't remember anything else.

— P. J. O'Rourke

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More quotes by P. J. O'Rourke

She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters.

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

The Liberty Manifesto (1993)

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Parliament of Whores (1991)

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

Parliament of Whores (1991)

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: P. J. O'Rourke (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.