P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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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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In the language of politics, there is only one translation for the phrase 'hope and change,' to wit: 'big, fat government.'
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Farm policy, although it's complex, can be explained. What it can't be is believed. No cheating spouse, no teen with a wrecked family car, no mayor of Washington, D.C., videotaped in flagrante delicto has ever come up with anything as farfetched as U.S. farm policy.
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I've only been to New Zealand once, about 1989. It was incredibly beautiful, kind of like the ideal of where I live in New England - all that and then some - but I can't say I was there long enough to get any very clear idea.
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Northwest Ohio is flat. There isn't much up. The land is so flat that a child from Toledo is under the impression that the direction hills go is down. Sledding is done down from street level into creek beds and road cuts.
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Every vote should carry a serial number, so that responsibility for harmful or careless use of the vote can be traced. Concealed voting should be outlawed.
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Moviemakers are rewarded with tax write-offs if, when seeking a location that looks like America, they seek it in America.
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Democrats hate Democrats most of all.
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Mike had called me and said he could offer me less, and I said, "You're on!" Because I was really excited with what Mike Kelly was doing, and now what Cullen Murphy is doing with Atlantic. It's a really cool magazine.
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The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.
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You can keep the dining room clean by eating in the kitchen.
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The world is being run by irresponsible spoiled brats.
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Conservatives really don't believe in politics as the primary instrument of getting along in life and therefore don't tend to put their energy into it a way people left of center do.
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Even the dumber parts of our government are not run by idiots. These are ordinary people like us, doing a job. By and large, they're trying to do it as well as they can. Or at least as often as people in the private sector try to do as well as they can.
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It's better to make fun of yourself because you've always got someone around to make fun of, and they can't sue you.
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Imagine having journalists in your own home and not even covering the furniture with plastic sheets first.
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The anti-individualist enemies that Ayn Rand battled are still the enemy, but they've shifted their line of attack. Political collectivists are no longer much interested in taking things away from the wealthy and creative.
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What use is it to endure the Dutch Rubs and Indian Rope Burns that are politics if you can't obtain mastery over people and give them noogies back?
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If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.
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Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty- their power and privilege- to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians.
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There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It's going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it's the Democrats.
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I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3,200 kids, and I had grade school classes with 40-some kids. Discipline was rigid. Most of the learning was rote. It worked.
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It's hard to be serious in life.
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There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick.