P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Opinions of language are as interesting as opinions of arithmetic.
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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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My life would have gone along perfectly well, politically speaking, if it hadn't been for girls.
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For some mysterious Darwinian reason, women feel compelled to straighten up bedrooms before and after sex. Try to make love in every other room of the house.
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There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees.
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Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives.
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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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There are probably more fact-finding tours of Nicaragua right now than there are facts- the country has shortages of practically everything.
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Writing on a computer makes saving what's been written too easy. Pretentious lead sentences are kept, not tossed. Instead of sitting surrounded by crumpled paper, the computerized writer has his mistakes neatly stored in digital memory.
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Government conspiracy? They can't even deliver our mail and it's got our address on it and everything!
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Regulation creates a moral hazard.
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I'm on Medicare now. If I go and have a big operation, it costs me nothing. It should cost me a little. I'm not rich, but I can afford a few grand if I have to have my appendix taken out. I can pitch in a little bit.
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A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'
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Obama's space policy doesn't differ much from George W. Bush's.
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Freedom is for fun.
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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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Gun violence has cost us too many political leaders, and hardly ever the worst ones.
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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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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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Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
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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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Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.
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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 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.