P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It's also closer. We can just step off the sidewalk. And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us. 'Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower.'
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Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.
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There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money.
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Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.
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I'm not a tech-savvy parent. I communicate with my children via the old-media format called yelling.
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Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.
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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.
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It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song.
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One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.
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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 steady job is at least as deleterious to the spirit of bachelorhood as a steady date. Some jobs are worse than actual wives.
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The Chinese had gunpowder, but it didn't occur to them to put it in a gun. They possessed the compass but didn't go anywhere. They invented paper, printing, and a written form of their language, but hardly anyone in China was taught to read.
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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.
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Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.
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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.
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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.
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Happy hour is slightly different in the Soviet Union. There are no ice cubes or orange-peel twists in the vodka. Also, it lasts all day.
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Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country.
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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.
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Cleaning, like seduction, should be done from the top down - starting with the ceiling, which is ridiculous. Gravity takes care of that.
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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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That doesn't mean that you should just sit back and just let accidents happen to you. No, you have to go out and cause them yourself. That way you're in control of the situation.
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Saigon is like all the other great modern cities of the world. It's the mess left from people getting rich.
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I was told to hand over my disposable lighter, to prevent, I suppose, any threat of "Do what I say or I'll light this Marlboro and you'll all die - in thirty years due to inhalation of secondhand smoke."