P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don't need any of those things.
-
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.
-
What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.
-
Lampoon ran out of steam in the early '80s, and wasn't able to reinvent itself because it ran out of talent. People who wanted to do this kind of stuff could suddenly make $100,000 in Hollywood right out of college.
-
One of these suburbs is actually named Stalingrad, which goes to show that the French have learned nothing about politics since they guillotined all the smart people in 1793.
-
It is important to remember when reading Adam Smith or even when just thinking about Smith that the era that he lived in, we're not talking about poverty in a day when it meant not enough bedrooms for the kids, an old car, a black and white television. We're talking about a whole world where poverty meant not enough to eat.
-
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.
-
Cats possess so many of the same qualities as some poeple that it is often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.
-
How a peaceful, uncrowded place with ample wherewithal stays poor is hard to explain. How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing.
-
I remember thinking cocaine was subtle until I noticed I'd been awake for three weeks and didn't know any of the naked people passed out around me.
-
Writing this book required an enormous amount of help from friends. To them goes the credit. I'll take the money.
-
Smoking is very bad for you and should only be done because it looks so good. People who don't smoke have a terrible time finding something polite to do with their lips.
-
Good manners consist of doing precisely what everyone thinks should be done, especially when no one knows quite what that is.
-
And worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. This is especially true if we're careful to pick the biggest possible problems to worry about. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody want to help Mom do the dishes.
-
Normally, the job sucks but work is kinda fun, because you see your friends and flirt with girls and stuff.
-
She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters.
-
The Constitution is an equally forthright piece of work and quite succinct ... giving the complete operating instructions for a nation of 250 million people. The manual for a Toyota Camry, which only seats five, is four times as long.
-
From National Lampoon, you go directly to Saturday Night Live, because it's a lot of the same people.
-
I was managing editor for a while [in National Lampoon ], and it does cause business problems when your circulation goes up.
-
A world government run by the UN will be like getting an old, purblind, half-deaf substitute teacher.
-
Most of the people who have grabbed hold of climate change and greenhouse gases, pollution, oil dependency - they have another motive, and their motive is to attain the appearance of virtue without having actually done anything virtuous.
-
If the wind is blowing like stink and everything is working right, a twelve-meter sailboat can go eleven and a half or twelve miles an hour, the same speed at which a bond lawyer runs around the Cental Park Reservoir.
-
Hunter S. Thompson brings a lunatic genius to ordinary events, and I bring an ordinary sensibility to lunatic events.
-
We're gonna be in a world of hurt if we don't get it fixed, because there's going to be billions of people out there - they're hungry, they're mad. One thing that they can get their hands on is guns.