P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'
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The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.
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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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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.
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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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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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Fortunately, I'm married to someone who's a pretty excellent parent!
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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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Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don't count modern civilization.
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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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Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.
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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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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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Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while 'Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm' by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes.
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Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.
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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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Chinese economic development has cost many American workers their jobs. That's the price of progress.
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The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say.
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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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The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.
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In a society where commonweal does not exist, there are no duties, only exactations to be avoided, and no freedoms, only privileges to be grabbed. There can be no such thing as 'public services' because nothing in the country is truly public. Everything is somebody's fief. And every fief must be exploited if the exploiter cares to survive.
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Every generation finds the drug it needs.
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You may be surprised to discover you're rich, especially if you're broke.
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Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming.