P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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There's one more terrifying fact about old people: I'm going to be one soon.
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Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.
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Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
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The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the '70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.
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If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just greedy, and consumers are just consuming for the sake of their own greed.
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In Western Australia they don't even know how to make that vital piece of sailing-boat equipment, the gin and tonic.
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Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.
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If a journalist shows a facility for praise he's liable to be offered a job in public relations or advertising and the next thing you know he's got a big office, a huge salary and is living in a fine home with a lovely wife and swell kids - another career blown to hell.
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I don't think anybody's really been successful with theorizing about value or creating a price theory.
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I like to argue with the radio.
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Mistreatment of al Qaeda members and their friends and hangers-on is something I number among my moral concerns. But it's number 1,000,000,001.
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The one thing that's terrible about traveling for fun is writing about it.
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Upbeat is for people who want to feel good about their cause: the reformers, the progressives, the revolutionaries, the utopians, the collectivists, and the rest of the altruistic scum of the earth. Why do these people want to feel good? They want to feel good in order to convince themselves that they are good.
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Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices.
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Toledo is better than exciting, it's happy. Because nothing is more conducive to unhappiness than taking yourself seriously, and taking yourself seriously is difficult when you're baseball team is the Mud Hens.
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I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.
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Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.
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There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. Keep your hands to yourself, Bill. Hillary, mind your own business.
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There are two organizations pushing for change in November - al Qaeda and the Democratic party. And they both have the same message: 'We're going to fix you, America.' On the whole, the terrorists have a more straightforward plan for fixing things. They're going to blow themselves up. Although, come to think of it, Howard Dean did that.
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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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The budget doesn't have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn't have much control over the budget.
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I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners- two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.
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I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.
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I'm here as a radio journalist but am not even sure which part of a tape recorder takes the pictures.