P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. They are, literally, selfless. A world designed for automobiles instead of people would have wider streets, larger dining rooms, fewer stairs to climb and no smelly, dangerous subway stations.
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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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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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'Malthus,', says Vice President Al Gore in Earth in the Balance, 'was right in predicting that the population would grow geometrically.' Al, as the father of four children, should know.
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Of all the American educational system's problems, none is more severe than the academic year beginning before Labor Day.
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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.
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Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.
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There's no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn't invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it's possible.
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Feminism is the result of a few ignorant and literal-minded women letting the cat out of the bag about which is the superior sex. Once women made it public that they could do things better than men, they were, of course, forced to do them.
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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.
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Political stuff is all about his [Hunter S. Thompson] reaction to a situation. And my stuff is much more externally driven.
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A dugout is much superior to a conventional manufactured canoe because you can get soaking wet without bothering to capsize it.
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In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election
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Democrats hate stay-at-home spouses, no matter what gender or gender preference.
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The most extraordinary change in Moscow was Arbat Street, the USSR's first pedestrian mall. Of course, there's something a little sad about a pedestrian mall in a nation where few people own cars- the whole damn country's a pedestrian mall.
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Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.
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There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.
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The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to collectivists, to people who believe that wealth is best obtained by redistribution, and that message is clear and concise . . . Egalitarianism is sinful; it's also cowardly.
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I've always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He'd have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with.
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I was never in the office [of Rolling Stone]. It was very different from Lampoon, where we spent a lot of time together socially, which is to say "drunk."
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The American political system is like fast food - mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things and everybody wants some.
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In 1970 or '71, early in the magazine, Michael O'Donoghue did maybe eight pages of a 1958 yearbook, from Ezra Taft Benson High School. But by the time the [book-length] high-school yearbook came around, he didn't want to be involved.
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I've never been able to get it straight about what these people who are worried about the trade deficit are worried about.
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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.