P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Funding for the original manned Voyager Mars Program was scratched in 1968, before humans had gotten out of Low Earth Orbit. Mid-'60s plans for a Venus fly-by with astronauts actually flying by it met the same fate.
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One of the few benefits of being a journalist is that you're not in the Army.
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There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.
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You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.
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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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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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A penny will not buy a penny postcard or a penny whistle or a single piece of penny candy. It will not even, if you're managing the U.S. Mint, buy a penny.
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There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.
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Democrats hate America being a world power because world power gives power to the nation instead of to Democrats.
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I rarely meet a politician that I don't like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.
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I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.
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A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative. Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too.
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Banning paper and plastic and making shoppers carry their groceries home in their mouths like dogs is just the thing to make a little tin humanist in the Obama West Wing think he's admiral of the Uzbek Navy.
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All business is capitalistic. You require capital for any sort of business endeavour.
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If the Japanese want to be taken seriously as world financial powers, they'd better quit using the same tailor as variety show chimps.
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My working hypothesis is that stupidity in popular culture is a constant. Popular culture cannot get more stupid.
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The poor are an especially important resource for innovation when they have the bravery and pluck to get out of the poor places in which they're living.
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Even the most left-wing politicians worship wealth creation - as the political-action-committee collection plate is passed.
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The First Amendment only says 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' It can disrespect all it wants.
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The bar is set pretty low if you want to be a hip, accessible conservative.
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In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
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Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.
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Horses and horsepower alike are about status and being cool.
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The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then a one-room apartment above it. There's street after street after street of that stuff.