P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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The only advantage to being a middle-aged man is that when you put on a jacket and tie, you're the Scary Dad. Never mind that no one has had an actually scary dad since 1966. The visceral fear remains.
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One nice thing about making jokes is that you don't have to prove them.
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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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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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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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Something that confirms all fears and many conspiracy theories about government is finding out what our elected representatives would put into law if they could.
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America is not doctrinaire. It's hard for an American politician to come up with an ideological position that is permanently unforgivable.
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My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't evil or anything, but he was worthless.
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You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism.
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Politicians will talk strategy and tactics and policies and programs until they're blue in the face, or you strangle them and they turn blue.
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The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes- thank God these people don't actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already.
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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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A pleasant natural environment is a good- a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force.
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The perpetuation of slavery, the exile and extermination of American Indians, and the passage of Jim Crow laws weren't carried out at the bidding of a few malefactors of great wealth.
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There's no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn't invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it's possible.
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Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices.
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There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick.
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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.
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Call a man 'ignorant,' and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.
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I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan.
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Space has always been confusing to politics.
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The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?
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The minute somebody joins a committee... they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.
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Fortunately, I'm married to someone who's a pretty excellent parent!