Kể từ Mark Twain, khó mà tìm được tác giả nào hài hước hơn P. J. O’Rourke. Quyển Parliament of Whores đã thành kinh điển. Đọc Eat the Rich thì cứ vài dòng là ta phải mỉm cười một lần. Sau đây là vài (trong vố số các) câu trong Eat the rich và Parliament of Whores:
- Economists claim to study production, distribution, and consumption. But production requires actual skills and so can’t be taught by economics professors, because they’d have to know how to do something. And consumption is a very private matter. Consider the consumption of toilet paper, condoms, frozen pizza-for-one eaten straight out of the microwave in the middle of the night, and cigarettes in the carport when your spouse thinks you’ve stopped smoking. Therefore, economics tends to concentrate on distribution.
- One thing that economists do know is that the study of economics is divided into two fields, “microeconomics” and “macroeconomics”. Micro is the study of individual economic behavior, and macro is the study of how economies behave as a whole. That is, microeconomics concerns things that economists are specifically wrong about, while macroeconomics concerns things economists are wrong about generally.
- Democrats are … the party that says government can make you richer, smarter, taller, and get the chickweed out of your lawn. Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.
- Giving money to government is like giving car keys and whiskey to teenage boys.
O’Rourke quả thật là ông vua của các one-liners. Hắn mới ra sách mới, tôi vội vàng đặt mua.
Thêm vài danh ngôn của O’Rourke.
- Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
- Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.
- Never fight an inanimate object.
- Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.
- The weirder you are going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
- When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.