P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs.
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President Obama has contempt for real money.
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Most people sort of enjoy going to work because of the socialisation, a chance to flirt with co-workers and so on, but actually hate the job they do.
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Stupid is a great force in human affairs.
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I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.
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No industry in living memory has collapsed faster than daily print journalism.
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Thank you, Occupy Wall Street. With your vivid example of anticapitalist squalor, I've been able to convince all three of my children to become investment bankers.
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People say, 'Oh, politics is so polarized today,' and I'm thinking... '1861, that was polarized.'
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To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You'd better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.
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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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A Kindle returns us to the inconvenience of the scroll, except with batteries and electronic glitches. It's as handy as bringing Homer along to recite the 'Iliad' while playing a lyre.
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Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are - these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.
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Woodstock had a tremendous impact on American artistic life.
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Everybody in the Middle East wants to explain why they're right.
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If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it's a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also - to do the lawn and clean the gutters.
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Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.
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I don't even know which end of a computer one is supposed to gaze into. I've never used a computer.
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As a nation, Kuwait has been, arguably, free of freedom itself. Claimed in turn by Constantinople, Riyadh, and Baghdad, Kuwait has survived by playing Turks off Persians, Arabs off one another, and the English off everyone.
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Voting has proliferated in the United States, and it has reached a point where there is now almost one vote available per citizen over the age of eighteen.
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There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.
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Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
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There's a certain kind of behavior in the Arab world that, to me, resembles the way young men behave when there is no significant influence from women in their lives.
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I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a 'learning experience.' Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a 'learning experience.' It makes me feel less stupid.
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Good manners can replace morals. It may be years before anyone knows if what you are doing is right. But if what you are doing is nice, it will be immediately evident.