Mike Royko Quotes & Sayings

All that proves is that most of the world is too poor to build bowling alleys, golf courses, tennis courts and baseball fields. There's hundreds of millions of poor people out there who still ain't got indoor plumbing, but that don't mean there's something great about an outhouse. Soccer is boring. I've never seen a more boring sport. — Mike Royko

The thing that got Daley mad," one of the delegates said later, "was that Ribicoff had been ass-kissing him just a day or two before. He came over and pushed for McGovern to our delegation and made a big speech about what a great guy Daley was. Then he got up there and played the hero for the TV cameras."
Daley was on his feet, his arms waiving, his mouth working. The words were lost in the uproar, but it was later asserted by Mayday, an almost-underground Washington paper, that a lip-reader had determined that he said: "Fuck you, you Jew son of a bitch, you lousy motherfucker, go home. — Mike Royko

In attacking the young, the liberal, and the black, Daley was in the mainstream of America's mass prejudices. The Democratic party may have suffered by his actions, but Daley came out ... even more popular than before because "bust their heads" was the mood of the land and Daley had swung the biggest club. — Mike Royko

The subject of criminal rehabilitation was debated recently in City Hall. It's an appropriate place for this kind of discussion because the city has always employed so many ex-cons and future cons. — Mike Royko

That is the greatest sin of all. You can make money under the table and move ahead, but you are forbidden to make secretaries under the sheets. He has dumped several party members for violating his personal moral standards.
If something is leaked to the press, the bigmouth will be tracked down and punished. Scandals aren't public scandals if you get there before you enemies do. — Mike Royko

When Michael Jordan quit, I suddenly found myself without a sports hero. — Mike Royko

Behind the high-rises are the crumbling, crowded buildings where the lower-income people live. No answer has been found to their housing problems because the real estate people say there's not enough profit in building homes for them. And beyond them are the middle-income people, who can't make it to the high-rises and can't stay where they are because the schools are inadequate, the poor are pushing toward them, and nothing is being done about their problems, so they move to the suburbs.
When their children grow up and they retire, maybe then they can move to a lake front high-rise. — Mike Royko

Show me somebody who is always smiling, always cheerful, always optimistic, and I will show you somebody who hasn't the faintest idea what the heck is really going on. — Mike Royko

So, for a variety of reasons, ranging from convenience to fear to economics, people stayed in their own neighborhood, loving it, enjoying the closeness, the friendliness, the familiarity, and trying to save enough money to move out. — Mike Royko

The neighborhood-towns were part of larger ethnic states. To the north of the Loop was Germany. To the northwest was Poland. To the west were Italy and Israel. To the southwest were Bohemia and Lithuania. And to the south was ireland ...
you could always tell, even with your eyes closed, which state you were in by the odors of the food stores and the open kitchen windows, the sound of the foreign or familiar language, and by whether a stranger hit you in the head with a rock. — Mike Royko

If God dislikes gays so much, how come he picked Michelangelo, a known homosexual, to paint the Sistine Chapel ceiling while assigning Anita Bryant to go on television and push orange juice? — Mike Royko

Reagan's approach will achieve one of the basic goals of the conservative: Things remain basically the same. The rich stay rich and the poor stay poor, or even a little poorer. — Mike Royko

Hollywood is right. A good and strong movie can have a more powerful social impact than any and all political speeches or newspaper editorials and columns. — Mike Royko

Strict gun laws are about as effective as strict drug laws ... It pains me to say this, but the NRA seems to be right: The cities and states that have the toughest gun laws have the most murder and mayhem. — Mike Royko

When I conducted a beer-rating session last year, I wrote that most American beers taste as if they were brewed through a horse. That offended many people in the American beer industry, as well as patriots who thought I was being subversive in praising foreign beers. I have just read a little-known study of American beers. So I must apologize to the horse. At least with a horse, we'd know what we're getting. — Mike Royko

Why do you think the lottery is so popular? Do you think anybody would play if the super payoff was a job on the night shift in a meat-packing plant? People play it so if they win they can be rich and idle. Like I told you years ago - if work is so good, how come they have to pay us to do it? — Mike Royko

A Pessimist sees the glass as half empty; A Cub Fan wonders when it's gonna spill. — Mike Royko

He runs City Hall like a small family business and keeps everybody on a short rein. They do only that which they know is safe and that which he tells them to do. So many things that should logically be solved several rungs below finally come to him. — Mike Royko

It's much harder to be a liberal than a conservative. Why? Because it is easier to give someone the finger than a helping hand. — Mike Royko

There is only one way to solve the alleged crisis of the erosion of 'family values.' And that is to get right down to the root cause of the problem. — Mike Royko

If the regular pay was important to him, the opportunity to learn was of even greater long-range significance. — Mike Royko

Hollywood has always been political. They consider it their right and duty to tell us what is politically good and right. — Mike Royko

Contrary to popular belief. It's much wiser to take money from the poor than the rich. — Mike Royko

Forty years ago, we were on the tail of the Front Page era. There was a different point of view. Reporters and editors were more forgiving of public people. They didn't think they had to stick someone in jail to make a career. — Mike Royko

For some people, being free means being free to keep their feet on someone else's chest. — Mike Royko

Anyone who gives a surgeon six thousand dollars for breast augmentation should give some thought to investing a little more in brain augmentation. — Mike Royko

Hollywood likes to boast that it can elevate the national conscience. — Mike Royko

Go that way, past the viaduct, and the wops will jump you, or chase you into Jew town ... Polacks would stomp on you ... Micks will shower you with Irish confetti from the brickyards. — Mike Royko

God tipped the country and all the fruits and nuts rolled west. — Mike Royko

It's no coincidence that female interest in the sport of baseball has
increased greatly since the ballplay- ers swapped those wonderful
old-time baggy flannel uniforms for leotards. — Mike Royko

Hating the Yankees is as American as pizza pie, unwed mothers, and cheating on your income tax. — Mike Royko

Later, when they sat down and went over the figures closely, they found an interesting pattern. Adamowski had received fifty-one percent of the votes, cast by white persons. But the enormous black vote had given Daley his victory. The people who were trapped in the ghetto slums and the nightmarish public housing projects, the people who had the worst school system and were most often degraded by the Police Department, the people who received the fewest campaign promises and who were ignored as part of the campaign trail, had given him his third term. They had done it quietly, asking for nothing in return. Exactly what they got. — Mike Royko

It's unnatural for people to run around the city streets unless they are thieves or victims. It makes people nervous to see someone running. I know that when I see someone running on my street, my instincts tell me to let the dog go after him. — Mike Royko

It's been my policy to view the Internet not as an 'information highway', but as an electronic asylum filled with babbling loonies. — Mike Royko

I never went to a John Wayne movie to find a philosophy to live by or to absorb a profound message. I went for the simple pleasure of spending a couple of hours seeing the bad guys lose. — Mike Royko

Whether one eats a cat or not is a personal choice, and I don't want to sway anyone one way or another. But if you do, there is one obvious cooking tip: Always remember to remove the bell from the cat's collar before cooking. — Mike Royko

Newspapers, magazines and other publications have the constitutional right to be offensive, even disgusting. As evidence of that, just watch this space regularly. — Mike Royko