P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
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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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Democrats hate Democrats most of all.
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If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.
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Obama's space policy doesn't differ much from George W. Bush's.
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I guess the argument of contextuality is that anything is okay as long as it's done by people who are sufficiently unlike you.
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When I board an airplane these days, all the middle-aged men are dressed like me - when I was an 8-year-old. They're in shorts and T-shirts. And it's not just on airplanes. It's in business offices, teachers' lounges, and churches.
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Jewishness cropped up and has never successfully been put down since.
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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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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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Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say 'I've got cancer' and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy?
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In a free country, government is a dull and onerous responsibility. It is a parent-teacher conference.
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Network television has been attempting to lure viewers for years with its low-interest programming only to have those viewers discover later that their brains are bankrupt.
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Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives.
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The key ingredient of politics is the idea that all of society's ills can be cured politically. It's like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried.
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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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Regulation creates a moral hazard.
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A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'
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Two key rules of Third World travel: 1. Never run out of whiskey. 2. Never run out of whiskey.
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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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Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
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I don't watch much television.
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Like it or not, I've come to appreciate soccer. Any kid can play, which fits with the inclusive agenda of progressive schools. Although the corollary to 'any kid can play' is that every kid must play because there is an iron grip to the warm hug of progressive inclusionism.
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The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.