P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
Because of their cuisine, Germans don't consider farting rude. They'd certainly be out of luck if they did.
-
The idea of a world where all people are alike - in wealth or in anything else - is a fantasy for the stupid.
-
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.
-
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.
-
Some people have facts; these can be proven. Some people have theories; these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it.
-
Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming.
-
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.
-
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
-
Humans have trouble with economics, as you may have noticed, and not just because economic circumstances sometimes cause them to starve. Humans seem to have an innate inability to pay attention to economic principles.
-
People say free trade causes dislocation. In actual fact, it's the lowering of trade barriers that causes the dislocation.
-
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.
-
The morning meal was served in traditional socialist fashion- very slowly, with the courses out of order so that the jelly arrived half an hour after the toast and the coffee didn't come until we'd called for the check. However, it was hard to be angry at a place that had ice cream, beer, and cigarettes on its breakfast menu.
-
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.
-
One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.
-
We like to pile language on language. Hunter [ S. Thompson] was an influence on me, no doubt about it.
-
All religions must be made child-proof. Our teachers' unions have done good work in this field, K through 12. Delaying first communions and bar mitzvahs until age 21 would be another positive step.
-
There's only one secret to bachelor cooking - not caring how it tastes.
-
There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change - or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is - certainly is one of them. But it's low on my list.
-
I'm not a tech-savvy parent. I communicate with my children via the old-media format called yelling.
-
What Enron was doing, what caused investors to embrace it in a rapture of baffled awe, was hiding debt.
-
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.
-
Children from the age of five to ten should watch more television. Television depicts adults as rotten SOB's given to fistfights, gunplay, and other mayhem. Kids who believe this about grownups aren't likely to argue about bedtime.
-
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.
-
A child growing up in an excessively safe environment may never learn that he is one - not until he gets married and has a wife to tell him so.