P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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What would annoy the most people most often? That is the true left-wing test of government intervention.
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A careful reading of 50 Simple Things leaves you wondering whether you're going to die from environmental disaster or intellectual annoyance. Failing either, you can worry yourself to death.
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The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay.
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A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.
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Then there was LSD, which was supposed to make you think you could fly. I remember it made you think you couldn't stand up, and mostly it was right.
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I'm a rather decisive type.
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The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a joke - albeit a grim one. Alfred Bernhard Nobel famously invented dynamite and felt sorry about it.
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Why do elites hate the poor? It's xenophobia. They don't know any poor people - except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don't speak English.
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Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force.
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Harvard is the home of American ideas.
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Don't send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.
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The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there's a reason for that - the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent - No Child Left Behind.
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Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization - an appeal to civilization itself.
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I knew Hunter Thompson since the '70s, and I loved him, but he would wear me out as I got older.
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Like most sensible people, you probably lost interest in modern art about the time that Julian Schnabel was painting broken pieces of the crockery that his wife had thrown at him for painting broken pieces of crockery instead of painting the bathroom and hall.
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You're never going to read 'The Wealth of Nations,' and you shouldn't, really. It's 900 pages.
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Head lice have their own animal-rights group, or may as well. The National Pediculosis Association doesn't exactly advocate letting lice live with dignity, but it does oppose pediculicidal treatments.
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Politics won't allow for the truth.
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The job of the president of the United States is to talk to the public, is to explain to them. Now, some presidents talk too much, like Bill Clinton. Some presidents try to talk but don't know how, like George Bush senior.
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Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry.
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Disney's House of the Future had the clean simplicity prized in the 1950s as relief from decades of frayed patchwork, jury-rigging, and make-do clutter caused by Depression and war.
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All previous populist movements were demanding things from governments, whereas the Tea Party is saying, 'Give us less, go away.' That's heartening to see.
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I think every high school student who was alert during the early '60s got very embittered by the slow progress and the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.
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The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.