P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
'Malthus,', says Vice President Al Gore in Earth in the Balance, 'was right in predicting that the population would grow geometrically.' Al, as the father of four children, should know.
-
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.
-
Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.
-
There's only one secret to bachelor cooking - not caring how it tastes.
-
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.
-
Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony, or, as we call them these days, "getting in touch with your sexuality," "raising your self-esteem," "relaxation therapy," and "being a recovered bulimic."
-
Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.
-
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.
-
Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.
-
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
-
I'm not a tech-savvy parent. I communicate with my children via the old-media format called yelling.
-
If Christ came back tomorrow, He'd have to change planes in Frankfurt. Modern air travel means less time spent in transit. That time is now spent in transit lounges.
-
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.
-
What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.
-
The Institute of U.S. and Canadian Studies is supposed to have subscribed to the Village Voice for six years in an attempt to find out about life in America's rural areas.
-
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.
-
A humorist doesn't really do that much note-taking.
-
Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.
-
Even Jimmy Carter can't be wrong all the time.
-
Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.
-
Saigon is like all the other great modern cities of the world. It's the mess left from people getting rich.
-
Of all the American educational system's problems, none is more severe than the academic year beginning before Labor Day.
-
If the politics of disease are to be understood, particularly in the dreadful countries where this understanding is most needed, then the politics of total collapse have to be understood first.
-
These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.