P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force.
-
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.
-
America's grossly unfair tax system won't lead to class war. Or, if it does, the war will be brief.
-
There isn't much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.
-
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.
-
Some day you will be wheeled in for a heart bypass operation, and a surgeon will be the person who is now behind the counter when you renew your car registration at the department of motor vehicles.
-
Some taxpayers may object to a print journalism bailout on the grounds that it mostly benefits the liberal elite. And we can't blame taxpayers for being reluctant to subsidize the reportorial careers of J-school twerps who should have joined the Peace Corps and gone to Africa to 'speak truth to power' to Robert Mugabe.
-
Writing is agony. I hate it.
-
There's something about Marxism that brings out warts; the only kind of growth this economic system encourages.
-
Obama, in pursuit of power, has been as greedy and irresponsible as any Wall Street tycoon in pursuit of money.
-
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.
-
Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid.
-
When you're a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, 'Gee, I wouldn't want to be doing that.' They're on your side.
-
Until I carried my wife off to New Hampshire, she defined wilderness as the Bronx.
-
War diminishes both civil and economic rights.
-
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.
-
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.
-
There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.
-
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.
-
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.
-
I like to have interesting things to write about. And when one says something is 'interesting,' one almost always means 'bad.'
-
You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.
-
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.
-
Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.