P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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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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There is no 20-year period in American history when stocks lost money.
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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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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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Generally it's not a good idea to wear Banana Republic - type khaki journalist clothes in a war zone. You might look too much like something that's supposed to be shot, such as a journalist.
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I was never a Democrat. I went from Republican to Maoist and then back again.
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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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There are a number of Americans who shouldn't vote. The number is 57 percent, to judge by the combined total of Clinton and Perot ballots in the 1996 presidential election.
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Hunter S. Thompson and I are old friends, but what we do is so different. There are surface similarities that really have to do with us being frustrated poets.
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Health care's not about insurance! Health care's about getting treatment.
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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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When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
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Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.
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The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
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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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Nobody is making Americans buy Chinese goods.
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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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When I'm in the car, I want the only one shouting to be me.
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Soldiers are not policemen, and it's very unfair, even for those soldiers who have some police training, to burden them with police duties. It's not what they're trained for, or equipped for.
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Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.
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Corporate corruption has ecological merits. It's helping to preserve that species known as Democrats - thought to be endangered as recently as the year 2000.
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The difference between corporations and governments is governments have a monopoly on force. It's a lot easier to vote with your feet or your wallet than it is to change a government with your vote.
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Only a few good leaders have paused to reflect seriously on being leaders.