P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.
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Lampoon was a very collegial operation, though "collegial" usually means "friendly" and it wasn't that friendly. But we were tight, like a family.
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Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.
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The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
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People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs.
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Health care's not about insurance! Health care's about getting treatment.
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When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
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I'm not guaranteeing what we come up with will be better for the planet. There is ethanol, for instance, which actually nets out with more pollution at greater expense, and more harm to the environment than petroleum, but we'll come up with something.
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Gambling is so pervasive in Nevada that maybe the state should just go the whole hog. There'd be gum machines that dispensed chewing tobacco if you lost. You could gamble for the toilet paper in public bathroom stalls. And fill out Keno cards in an attempt to win cancer therapy at the hospital.
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The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the General Livestock Corporation assembly line putting udders on cows.
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Being a humorist is not a voluntary thing. You can tell this because in a situation where saying a funny thing will cause a lot of trouble, a humorist will still say the funny thing. No matter how inappropriate.
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Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered.
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Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot.
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Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
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Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.
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In the Soviet Union, no industry went under until they all did.
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Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.
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Nobody is making Americans buy Chinese goods.
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Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There's more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it's awfully close to human.
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The purpose of the Senate is to keep 100 middle aged knuckleheads out of the private sector where they can do real harm.
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Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else.
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I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements.
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Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
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Arab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.