P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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America is a meritocracy.
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Death is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God's grace.
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America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don't think that way. We don't think much at all, thank God.
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All business is capitalistic. You require capital for any sort of business endeavour.
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The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.
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The laws of the marketplace are physical laws, and they don't become suspended in a crisis any more than the law of gravity does.
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Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.
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There was also a hunger strike in front of the National Press Club, which seemed an odd place to have a hunger strike (a cocktail fast, maybe). Although the Bangladeshis were savvy enough to know to know that if you're going to pester journalists, don't go to where they work: You'll never find them there.
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I live in New Hampshire. We're in favor of global warming. Eleven hundred more feet of sea-level rises? I've got beachfront property. You tell us up there, 'By the end of the century, New York City could be underwater,' and we say, 'Your point is?'
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College professors used to be badly paid and worth it. Colleges used to be modest institutions; they should go back to being modest institutions.
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Tel Aviv is new, built on the sand dunes north of Jaffa in the 1890s, about the same time Miami was founded. The cities bear a resemblance in size, site, climate, and architecture, which ranges from the bland to the fancifully bland.
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The two most frightening words in Washington are 'bipartisan consensus.' Bipartisan consensus is when my doctor and my lawyer agree with my wife that I need help.
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I suspect the soviets never did want to use those bombs. The most Stalinist of Soviet hard-liners - Stalin, for example - must have realized a nuclear war would be a hard thing to clean up after.
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We journalists don't have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scutter.
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One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it's remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver's license.
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Tom DeLay may or may not have broken campaign finance laws, but he did his best to look like he was breaking them.
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Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry.
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Dates used to be made days or even weeks in advance. Now dates tend to be made the day after. That is, you get a phone call from someone who says, "If anyone asks, I was out to dinner with you last night, okay?"
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Jimmy Carter was - he still - he remains to this day America's most ex of ex-presidents. You just can't believe that we elected this doofus. He was a bright enough guy and sort of well-meaning. But he was about as prepared to be president of the United States as your goofy old uncle, you know, the one that memorises baseball statistics.
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Guns are the ultimate bulwark against government misbehavior.
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Public schools helped create the idea of America and inculcate Americans with a few rudiments of knowledge. To judge by that very American item, the Internet, a few rudiments is all anyone cares to have.
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The Italians have had two thousand years to fix up the Forum and just look at the place.
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Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.
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Demolishing pretensions, especially worthy ones, is a hallmark of the baby boom.