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Whereas Rolling Stone, I just never had anything to do with them. I'd stop by the office maybe twice a year.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Something that comes to us, some gym shoe that comes to us as a result of child labor from a brutal dictatorship, where people do not have basic freedoms, it wouldn't bug me to tax the living Dickens out of that thing or even to forbid its importation whatsoever. But that's a moral question, not an economic question.
P. J. O'Rourke
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The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle.
P. J. O'Rourke
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In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a population density four times that of New York City.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about "character issues."
P. J. O'Rourke
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It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever's special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet: to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Off they go on this sort of camping trip to Iwo Jima, where they're taken around and shown where all the battles took place. It's very moving. Disgusting little island, though. Still an active volcano. Stinks of sulfur. There are dead Japanese everywhere under that island. It's icky. But I knew I would never have another chance to go, so I took the job.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Finally, one night we were smoking pot [with Michael O'Donoghue] and talking about the people that are invariably in high school, whether you go to prep school or public school or ghetto school or rich suburban school. And actually, it spun off from a Kurt Vonnegut quote.
P. J. O'Rourke
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There's nothing inherently lame about electricity. I've got a basement full of power tools that all operate with electricity, and they're manly items. And when you see a great big locomotive hauling a mile of freight cars, that's a hybrid. A lot of people don't understand that.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Cats possess so many of the same qualities as some poeple that it is often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Guns are always the best method for a private suicide. They are more stylish looking than single-edged razor blades and natural gas has got so expensive. Drugs are too chancy. You might miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time.
P. J. O'Rourke
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As a libertarian I believe we should have a federal government simple and circumscribed enough to be run by an average, dull, normal American. With George W. Bush we have half the equation in place.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Apparently Bolivia is the key source of lithium in the world. So we're gonna trade the Saudis for the Bolivians.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Never Refuse Wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn't drink must be an alcoholic.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don't need any of those things.
P. J. O'Rourke
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It is a law of governance that democracies have to spend themselves dizzy. Citizens of democracies can, after all, tell their government to give them things.
P. J. O'Rourke
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During the mid-1980s dairy farmers decided there was too much cheap milk at the supermarket. So the government bought and slaughtered 1.6 million dairy cows. How come the government never does anything like this with lawyers?
P. J. O'Rourke
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You'll note that politicians no longer spend money, they invest it. Don't worry about paying more to the [IRS]. You aren't being taxed; you're taking a plunge on a fly-by-night stock issue.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Well the planet I've got a chance to visit is Earth, and Earth's principal features are chaos and war. I think I'd be a fool to spend years here and never have a look.
P. J. O'Rourke
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Men generally pay for all expenses on a date ... either sex, however, may bring a little gift, its value to be determined by the bizarrness of the sexual request to be made later that evening.
P. J. O'Rourke
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The day was warm and clear. Kids were playing soccer in the parking lots and women were sunning their babies and having their tea all over the lawns. The scene was entirely too cheery for journalism.
P. J. O'Rourke
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What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.
P. J. O'Rourke
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When a couple decides to divorce, they should inform both sets of parents before having a party and telling all their friends. This is not only courteous but practical. Parents may be very willing to pitch in with comments, criticism, and malicious gossip of their own to help the divorce along.
P. J. O'Rourke
