P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Kabul is a walled city, which sounds romantic except the walls are pre-cast reinforced concrete blast barriers, 10 feet tall and 15 feet long and moved into place with cranes. The walls are topped with sandbags, and the sandbags are topped with guard posts from which gun barrels protrude.
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Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming.
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Cars let us out of the barn and, while they were at it, destroyed the American nuclear family. As anyone who has had an American nuclear family can tell you, this was a relief to all concerned.
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The only really good vegetable is Tabasco sauce. Put Tabasco sauce in everything. Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin.
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Catchphrases flourish in contemporary American English.
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One nice thing about the Third World, you don't have to fasten your seat belt. (Or stop smoking. Or cut down on saturated fats.) It takes a lot off your mind when average life expectancy is forty-five minutes.
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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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Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.
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Every generation finds the drug it needs.
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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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The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for politics.
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The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
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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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A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians
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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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Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don't count modern civilization.
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I don't mind America becoming a Third World country. The weather is better in the Third World than it is where I live in New Hampshire. And household help will be much cheaper.
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Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.
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Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.
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The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.
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Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.
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Remember, FDA employees are serious about fear. We pay these people to panic about an iota of rodent hair in our chili, even when the recipe calls for it. FDA employees are first-class agonizers, world champions at losing sleep. When Meryl Streep got hysterical about Alar, they actually checked the apples instead of Meryl's head.
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Chinese economic development has cost many American workers their jobs. That's the price of progress.
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We tried to find the mayor. His secretary said he was at home. His wife said he was at the office. In Italy or France this would mean His Honor was having an affair. In Chabarovice it probably meant he'd run off to be a busboy in Stuttgart.