P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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I'm really tired of virtue.
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Marijuana is … self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?
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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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Never fight an inanimate object.
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Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.
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Keeping house is as unpleasant and filthy as coal mining, and the pay's a lot worse.
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If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.
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It's hard to be serious in life.
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Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives.
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People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it's simply a measurement.
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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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Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
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Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
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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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Democrats hate success.
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They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'
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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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Fishing ... is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait.
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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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Detroit is beautiful - though you probably have to be a child of the industrial Midwest, like me, to see it.
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You can keep the dining room clean by eating in the kitchen.
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New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State's registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they're going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can't understand what they say.
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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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I had a confused early hippie phase, which was like a cafeteria tray of sloppy, semi-Marxist thoughts, absorbed second-hand.