P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
Traffic was like a bad dog. It wasn't important to look both ways when crossing the street; it was important to not show fear.
-
Political discourse has become so rotten that it's no longer possible to tell the stench of one presidential candidate from the stink of another.
-
In Japan people drive on the left. In China people drive on the right. In Vietnam it doesn't matter.
-
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.
-
The typical old-fashioned diet was so bad it almost resembled modern dieting.
-
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.
-
The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
-
Cleaning, like seduction, should be done from the top down - starting with the ceiling, which is ridiculous. Gravity takes care of that.
-
Journalists aren't supposed to praise things. It's a violation of work rules almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or absolving the CIA of something.
-
The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm.
-
It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last.
-
In thirteen years, every aspect of the universe can change - ask a thirteen-year-old.
-
When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.
-
Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.
-
People with a mission to save the earth want the earth to seem worse than it is so their mission will look more important.
-
Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.
-
In the past a man was expected to give his seat on a bus to a woman. Today it would be much more courteous for that man to give her his job.
-
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.
-
A charity ball is like a dance except it's tax deductible.
-
The sky was so clear that the starlight cast shadows, and so many sparkles and glitters and glints appeared above us that it looked like something really expensive had been dropped and shattered in heaven - God's Steuben ashtray, maybe.
-
Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.
-
I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.
-
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?
-
Political stuff is all about his [Hunter S. Thompson] reaction to a situation. And my stuff is much more externally driven.