P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.
-
What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.
-
In thirteen years, every aspect of the universe can change - ask a thirteen-year-old.
-
Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.
-
On Friday, June 12, 1992, 110 heads of state gathered at Riocentro. They were indistinguishable in dress and deportment. Where was biodiversity when we needed it?
-
The Australian language is easier to learn than boat talk. It has a vocabulary of about six words.
-
Medical researchers don't know much about head lice because they don't much care. The reason that they don't much care is, paradoxically, that they know a lot. That is, they know one important thing: there is no evidence that head lice transmit disease.
-
Masochists are people that have pleasure confused with pain. In a world that has television confused with entertainment, doritoes confused with food, and Dan Quayle confused with a national political leader, masochists are clearly less mixed-up than the rest of us.
-
A dugout is much superior to a conventional manufactured canoe because you can get soaking wet without bothering to capsize it.
-
The American political system is like fast food - mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things and everybody wants some.
-
People with a mission to save the earth want the earth to seem worse than it is so their mission will look more important.
-
A deadly sins addendum is long overdue. Life has changed since Pope Gregory the Great scribbled his initial list in the sixth century.
-
There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.
-
Even newlyweds don't spend much time together, now that few marriages outlast the appliance warranties.
-
There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
-
Global warming is a fact. Now it's up to liberals to make it a reality. Hence there is crucial importance in preventing powerful, greedy free market forces from getting in the way of worsening storms and rising sea levels. The Kyoto Accord is a good first step.
-
Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.
-
All religious believers should be licensed to make sure that they are competent to hold opinions and viewpoints and that they don't believe in just any old thing, such as creationism or a flat tax.
-
A good bachelor drinks his dessert (and sometimes the rest of his meals). A sweet tooth is a danger signal that you're getting too much exercise and not enough cocktails.
-
In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe.
-
One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.
-
It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song.
-
In general, life is better than it has ever been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word : Dentistry.
-
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.