P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas.
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There's something about Marxism that brings out warts; the only kind of growth this economic system encourages.
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In Israel, waves of anger and fear circulate all the time, but so do jokes and gossip and silky evening breezes. So, too, in America.
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The baby boomers' politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there's been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness.
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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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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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There are a few things that people all around the world need to admit to themselves. Trade restraints slow economic growth, the euro is not a reserve currency, and scoreless sports ties are boring.
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Neither liberal nor conservative politicians can resist the temptation to stand as mighty sequoias of rectitude amid the lowly underbrush of fundraising.
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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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We Americans, who invented traffic, are always being startled by the forms into which it has evolved around the world.
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Everybody in America who didn't come over the Bering Strait ice bridge stole his land from somebody else.
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Funding for the original manned Voyager Mars Program was scratched in 1968, before humans had gotten out of Low Earth Orbit. Mid-'60s plans for a Venus fly-by with astronauts actually flying by it met the same fate.
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Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don't draft people; it's not jury duty.
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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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The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It's a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.
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The poor are an especially important resource for innovation when they have the bravery and pluck to get out of the poor places in which they're living.
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We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren't there.
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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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After the events of the 20th century, God, quite reasonably, left Europe. But He's still here in the United States.
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In Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is more interesting: a viper-toothed, puling, supercilious crank, thwarted in ambition, aging gracelessly, mad at the cosmos, and ashamed of his own jejune ideals. He is nevertheless very dear to me.
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Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I'm not even sure we can draw lessons from them.
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I write because I like to make things and the only things I am good at making things with are words.
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It's the squares who know how to fly the fighter planes and operate the missiles and the bombs and work the M-16s. Liberals would still be fumbling with the federally mandated trigger locks.
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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.