P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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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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Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another.
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America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.
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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 shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination; if you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you've read his autobiography.
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The observers had a logbook recording the assaults, bombings, and artillery attacks on the area. Each page was ruled in vertical columns: DATE, TIME, LOCATION, DAMAGE, CASUALTIES. The columns headed ACTION TAKEN BY THE UN were completely empty.
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The collegiate idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.
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Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind, goddamnit!
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There are 1.3 billion people in China, and they all want a Buick.
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Chinese economic development has cost many American workers their jobs. That's the price of progress.
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Freedom is for fun.
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When Adam Smith was being incomprehensible, he didn't have the luxury of brief, snappy technical terms as a shorthand for incoherence.
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Never fight an inanimate object.
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Any trade that is voluntarily made is mutually beneficial, by definition, and, indeed, is balanced, by definition.
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The great thing about starting golf in your forties is that you can start golf in your forties. You can start other things in your forties but generally your wife makes you stop them, as Bill Clinton found out.
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Even newlyweds don't spend much time together, now that few marriages outlast the appliance warranties.
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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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As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children.
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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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To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.
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Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a rear-engine car handles best. I say a rented car handles best.
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Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
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If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.
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I myself am a parent in a small business. Number of employees: one.