P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. Keep your hands to yourself, Bill. Hillary, mind your own business.
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A friend of mine at the American Enterprise Institute says there are two parties: the silly party and the stupid party. I'm too old for the silly party, so I had to join the stupid party.
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America has to act. But, when America acts, other nations accuse us of being 'hegemonistic', of engaging in 'unilateralism', of behaving as if we're the only nation on earth that counts. We are.
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The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say.
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You read [Bill ] Maher's book, and he didn't take Econ 101. All his arguments about gasoline, it's not that they're right or wrong - they're just not informed.
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I know quite a few fellow members of the news analysis and commentary business, and I have it from the highest-placed sources, on the record, that each and every one of our children is a genius.
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A humorist doesn't really do that much note-taking.
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Every generation finds the drug it needs.
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I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had... maybe I could even quit renting.
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What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.
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Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.
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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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One of the reporters must have flunked journalism school because he asked a question that went straight to the point.
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Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.
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Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How'd they get so rich? Because they're free.
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Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked 'What's the big idea?' knows, most big ideas are bad ones.
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Weird clothing is de rigeur for teenagers, but today's generation of teens is finding it difficult to be sufficiently weird. This is because the previous generation of teens, who went through adolescence in the sixties and seventies, used up practically all the available weirdness.
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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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These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.
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I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck.
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The larger the German body, the smaller the German bathing suit and the louder the German voice issuing German demands and German orders to everybody who doesn't speak German. For this, and several other reasons, Germany is known as 'the land where Israelis learned their manners'.
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Democrats hate stay-at-home spouses, no matter what gender or gender preference.
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A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'
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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.