P.J. O'Rourke - Quotes 1-100
Cuba isn't exactly the future most of us have planned for our kids. Unless we're really mad at the little buggers.
P.J. O'Rourke
Democracy is a bulwark against tyranny - unless the demos get tyrannical. People can vote themselves poor, as the Swedes seem to be trying to do.
P.J. O'Rourke
A friend of mine got a colonoscopy and they didn't find anything up there except his 2008 vote for Obama.
P.J. O'Rourke
I overheard my nine-year-old daughter scolding her little brother. Her admonition should be a motto for everyone in business, politics, media, entertainment, and the arts: 'Don't believe everything you say.'
P.J. O'Rourke
The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.
P.J. O'Rourke
Vast sections of Tanzania are infected with sleeping sickness borne by the tsetse fly. The fly's devastating effects are similar to those of other known sleeping sickness carriers, the tsetse professor, and the tsetse boss.
P.J. O'Rourke
We know nothing about where political systems come from. We don't even know where they don't come from. And considering the shiftless, slave-trading, bed-hopping, debt-ducking (and that's just Thomas Jefferson) nature of America's founding fathers, who also included rum-soaked bunkum merchants and Indian-massacring land swindlers (and they all oppressed women and weren't vegans) we should be careful about saying that certain societies or nationalities or religious persuasions aren't 'ready for democracy.'
P.J. O'Rourke
The U.S. has had a broad range of poverty programs for 30 years. Those programs have failed. Millions of people are still poor. And those people vote for politicians who favor keeping the poverty programs in place. There's a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.
P.J. O'Rourke
Political systems must love poverty - they produce so much of it. Poor people make easier targets for a demagogue. No Mao or even Jiang Zemin is likely to arise on the New York Stock Exchange floor.
P.J. O'Rourke
With Epcot Center the Disney Corporation has accomplished something I didn't think possible in today's world. They have created a land of make-believe that's worse than regular life.
P.J. O'Rourke
Drugs have taught an entire generation of Americans the metric system.
P.J. O'Rourke
Politicians are wonderful people as long as they stay away from things they don't understand, such as working for a living.
P.J. O'Rourke
People are all the same, though their circumstances differ terribly.
P.J. O'Rourke
There are no kinder or better people in the world than those who listen to you when you are 18.
P.J. O'Rourke
Politicians are interested in people. Not that this is a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
P.J. O'Rourke
You say we (reporters) are distracting from the business of government. Well, I hope so. Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.
P.J. O'Rourke
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.
P.J. O'Rourke
Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in Heaven.
P.J. O'Rourke
Liberals hate wealth, they say, on grounds of economic injustice - as though prosperity were a pizza, and if I have too many slices, you're left with nothing but a Domino's box to feed your family.
P.J. O'Rourke
Well the planet I've got a chance to visit is Earth, and Earth's principal features are chaos and war. I think I'd be a fool to spend years here and never have a look.
P.J. O'Rourke
Concerning the free market, politicians are cheerleaders who have themselves confused with the people who carried the ball. And many politicians are cheerleaders for the other side.
P.J. O'Rourke
Voting in the House of Representatives is done by means of a little plastic card with a magnetic strip on the back - like a VISA card but with no, that is, absolutely no, spending limit.
P.J. O'Rourke
Ann Coulter to me is someone who says things that I say all the time, but I say them at three in the morning when I'm drunk as a monkey. She says them at three in the afternoon stone sober in bright daylight.
P.J. O'Rourke
I am a journalist and, under the modern journalist's code of Olympian objectivity (and total purity of motive), I am absolved of responsibility. We journalists don't have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scurry.
P.J. O'Rourke
I believe that Western civilization, after some disgusting glitches, has become almost civilized. I believe it is our first duty to protect that civilization. I believe it is our second duty to improve it. I believe it is our third duty to extend it if we can.
P.J. O'Rourke
Farm policy, although it's complex, can be explained. What it can't be is believed. No cheating spouse, no teen with a wrecked family car, no mayor of Washington, D.C., videotaped in flagrante delicto has ever come up with anything as farfetched as U.S. farm policy.
P.J. O'Rourke
Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about 'character issues.' Either that or just go ahead and determine the presidency with three-legged races and pie-eating contests. It would make better TV.
P.J. O'Rourke
Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated - serious, bulky and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.
P.J. O'Rourke
Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting a high-powered corporate lawyer - Hillary - in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money - hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.
P.J. O'Rourke
Smoking crack is a way for people who couldn't afford college to study the works of Charles Darwin.
P.J. O'Rourke
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.
P.J. O'Rourke
Never refuse wine. It is an odd but universally held opinion that anyone who doesn't drink must be an alcoholic.
P.J. O'Rourke
Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.
P.J. O'Rourke
I'm not a liberal so I have a poor grasp of stuff I don't know anything about.
P.J. O'Rourke
An important person should be treated exactly like anyone else holding a gun at your head.
P.J. O'Rourke
What use is it to endure the Dutch Rubs and Indian Rope Burns that are politics if you can't obtain mastery over people and give them noogies back?
P.J. O'Rourke
I suppose I should get a VCR, but the only thing I like about television is its ephemerality.
P.J. O'Rourke
Mass transit helps preserve nature in places like Yellowstone Park, the Everglades and the Arctic wilderness, because mass transit doesn't go there.
P.J. O'Rourke
Boring others is a form of aggression, and Hillary attacks her public with the weapon of brutal dullness.
P.J. O'Rourke
The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.
P.J. O'Rourke
There are two organizations pushing for change in November - al Qaeda and the Democratic Party. And they both have the same message: 'We're going to fix you, America.' On the whole, the terrorists have a more straightforward plan for fixing things. They're going to blow themselves up. Although, come to think of it, Howard Dean did that.
P.J. O'Rourke
We are endowed with a moral capacity that animals, plants, rocks - and many fervent ecologists - lack. We should not be dirty, wasteful or cruel. To do so harms others. That's wrong. Therefore we don't disembowel Bambi like the way coyotes do, we shoot him first.
P.J. O'Rourke
There's no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn't invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it's possible.
P.J. O'Rourke
Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while a Madonna tune lasts little more than three minutes.
P.J. O'Rourke
The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power - even the smallest and silliest kind of power - out of the hands of... members of a dangerous class - the class that knows what's good for us better than we do.
P.J. O'Rourke
Hong Kong is the best contemporary example of laissez faire. The economic theory of 'allow to do' holds that all sorts of doings ought, indeed, to be allowed, and that government should interfere only to keep the peace, ensure legal rights, and protect property.
P.J. O'Rourke
The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 - to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell.
P.J. O'Rourke
When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state... this violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people.
P.J. O'Rourke
About 5.5 percent of America's gross national product goes to defense. Wouldn't you be willing to spend 5.5 percent of your income to guarantee the safety of your spouse, kids, house, car, savings, investments, and sports and hobby equipment? Not only would you - add up your car insurance, life insurance, and homeowner's insurance premiums - you do.
P.J. O'Rourke
For nearly two generations, since the middle of the Great Depression, we've been hearing that to be president of the United States is almost more of a job than one man can handle. Yet consider some of the men who've held this job, and tell me how true this can be.
P.J. O'Rourke
Baby boomers don't vote for baby boomers. We know us. We're nuts. We don't want anyone in our generation anywhere near the ICBM launch codes. We might start channeling Ozzie Osborne.
P.J. O'Rourke
Bringing the government in to run Wall Street is like saying, 'Dad burned the dinner, let's get the dog to cook.'
P.J. O'Rourke
Collectivism makes for a very large and, hence, very powerful group. This power is centralized in the government. Any power is open to abuse.
P.J. O'Rourke
The duties of the Supreme Court are the simplest and best defined of any part of government. The Supreme Court justices have to do nothing but sit and let others make ugly fools of themselves in front of the Supreme Court bench.
P.J. O'Rourke
Golf... combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.
P.J. O'Rourke
Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it's cute but boring and expensive.
P.J. O'Rourke
Liberalism is just Communism sold by the drink.
P.J. O'Rourke
I have only one firm belief about the American political system, and that is this: God is a Republican and Santa Claus is a Democrat.
P.J. O'Rourke
You're never too poor to clean your front yard.
P.J. O'Rourke
'The housing authority, they treat us like a dog,' as one woman who'd lived in a Newark project for 13 years put it. This was an untruth. There are laws about keeping dogs in places like these.
P.J. O'Rourke
Whenever I'm in the middle of conformity, surrounded by oneness of mind with people oozing concurrence on every side, I get scared. And when I find myself agreeing with everybody, too, I get terrified.
P.J. O'Rourke
Politicians are not only likable and interested in people, they even tell the truth sometimes. (Though whether this says a lot for politicians or very little for the truth depends.)
P.J. O'Rourke
When government takes wealth from those who produce it, people become less inclined to produce more of it - or more inclined to hide it. Conversely, when government gives wealth to those who don't produce it, they too become less productive since they're already getting what they'd produce in return for not producing it.
P.J. O'Rourke
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.
P.J. O'Rourke
When government quits being something we use only in an emergency and becomes the principal source of aid and assistance in our society, then the size, expense and power of government are greatly increased. The decision that politicians are wiser, kinder and more honest than we are and that they, not we, should control the dispensation of eleemosynary goods and services is, in itself, a diminishment of the individual and proof that we're jerks.
P.J. O'Rourke
Of course politicians don't tell the truth: 'I am running for the U.S. Senate in order to even the score with those grade-school classmates of mine who, 35 years ago, gave me the nickname Fish Face,' or, 'Please elect me to Congress so that I can get out of the Midwest and meet bigwigs and cute babes.'
P.J. O'Rourke
The credit card debt that you've run up is essentially a junk bond held by Visa. There's no collateral except the Benetton sweater that the dog chewed. There's a good reason you get soaked on your credit card balances.
P.J. O'Rourke
The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes - thank God these people don't actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already.
P.J. O'Rourke
A good politician can be two places at once when it comes to public appearances, just as a good politician can be no place at several different times when it comes to public issues.
P.J. O'Rourke
When it's better for enthusiastic and ambitious professionals to go to work for a country's government than it is for them to go to work, the country is in trouble. In China they probably make government jobs awful on purpose.
P.J. O'Rourke
In order to understand the stock market we have to realize that, like anything enormous and inert, it's fundamentally stable, and, like anything emotion-driven, its volatile as hell. Got that? Me neither.
P.J. O'Rourke
I am no stranger to loud noise. I've been to a Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels concert. I once dated a woman with two kids.
P.J. O'Rourke
There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.
P.J. O'Rourke
Manners are the formal and ceremonial manifestations of a society's underlying values. Usually these values are things like loyalty, altruism, veneration of the elderly, valor, etc.
P.J. O'Rourke
Of course, a liberal would say that a sharing and caring government doesn't have to turn out this way. It could be something like Sweden. And there you have it - the downside: 100 million people killed; the upside: ABBA, Volvos and suicide.
P.J. O'Rourke
Federal balanced budget amendment proposals are like trying to stop smoking by hiding cigarettes from yourself and then leaving a note in your pocket telling you where they are.
P.J. O'Rourke
The good news is I balanced the federal budget. It took me all morning but I did it. You're probably wondering how a middle-aged amateur who can't count to three without removing a mitten did this. It helps that I am not up for reelection to the position of being me.
P.J. O'Rourke
We don't want to drive the president out of office until we know for sure whether Al Gore is an alien cyborg. Sure, he looked human when he debated Perot, but I understand it blew out two-thirds of his circuits.
P.J. O'Rourke
No, it turns out Saddam Hussein didn't have weapons of mass destruction. And how crazy does that make Saddam? All he had to do was tell Hans Blix, 'Look anywhere you want. Look under the bed. Look beneath the couch. Look behind the toilet tank in the third presidential palace on the left, but keep your mitts off my copies of Maxim.' And Saddam could have gone on dictatoring away until Donald Rumsfeld gets elected head of the World Council of Churches. But no…
P.J. O'Rourke
Children from the age of five to ten should watch more television. Television depicts adults as rotten SOBs, given to fistfights, gunplay, and other mayhem. Kids who believe this about grownups aren't likely to argue about bedtime.
P.J. O'Rourke
Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.
P.J. O'Rourke
It's easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favorite pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it.
P.J. O'Rourke
There's a lot of debate on this subject - about what kind of car handles best. Some say a front-engined car, some say a rear-engined car. I say a rented car. Nothing handles better than a rented car. You can go faster, turn corners sharper, and put the transmission into reverse while going forward at a higher rate of speed in a rented car than in any other kind.
P.J. O'Rourke
The purpose of a funeral service is to comfort the living. It is important at a funeral to display excessive grief. This will show others how kind-hearted and loving you are and their improved opinion of you will be very comforting.
P.J. O'Rourke
Skiing consists of wearing $3,000 worth of clothes and equipment and driving 200 miles in the snow in order to stand around at a bar and drink.
P.J. O'Rourke
I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don't let it bother me. I don't let it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.
P.J. O'Rourke
Wealth makes materialism easier to bear.
P.J. O'Rourke
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.
P.J. O'Rourke
The bullying of citizens by means of dreads and fights has been going on since Paleolithic times. Greenpeace fund-raisers on the subject of global warming are not much different than the tribal Wizards on the subject of lunar eclipses. 'Oh no, Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me silver and I will make him spit her out.'
P.J. O'Rourke
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money - if a gun is held to his head.
P.J. O'Rourke
Republicans intend to pursue the war in Iraq but to do so with a minimal number of troops on the ground. This is not to be confused with the disastrous Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld policy of using a minimal number of troops on the ground to pursue the war in Iraq. Democrats intend to end the war, but they don't know when. Democrats are making the 'high school sex promise': I'll pull out in time, honest!
P.J. O'Rourke
Incidentally, there's a balanced position that all of America's presidential candidates could take on the controversial abortion issue. If they want votes they shouldn't campaign to make abortion illegal or legal. They should campaign to make it retroactive. If a kid reaches 25 and he or she is still jobless, feckless, and sitting around Starbucks acting like a - no offense - European, then whack.
P.J. O'Rourke
Government isn't a good way to solve problems. Government is concerned mostly with self-perpetuation and is subject to fantastic ideas about its own capabilities. Government is wasteful of the nation's resources, immune to common sense and subject to pressure from every half-organized bouquet of assholes. Government is distrustful of and disrespectful toward average Americans while being easily gulled by Americans with money, influence or fame.
P.J. O'Rourke
Each American embassy comes with two permanent features - a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas. Most demonstrators spend half their time burning Old Glory and the other half waiting for green cards.
P.J. O'Rourke
We want someone familiar and reassuring in the White House, someone like us. In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if we secretly wanted to be president ourselves. What could be more familiar than that? And who's more like us than we are? 'Hey, the place really is oval. Cool desk. Where do they keep 'the button'? Let's send the helicopter out for Chinese.'
P.J. O'Rourke
The term consumerism has been current since the middle 1960s... Literally interpreted, the word means 'an ideology based on the opposite of being productive.' This ideology has caused enormous changes in the American economy. At one time complaining was a cottage industry. The typical maker of complaints gave them to (or traded them with) friends and family members. Sometimes the complaints were sent to newspapers or included in prayers. Friends, family, the press and God then ignored the complaints.
P.J. O'Rourke
It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.
P.J. O'Rourke
Fame is a communicable disease. If you get screwed by someone who's got it, you may catch it yourself.
P.J. O'Rourke
Guns are always the best method for private suicide. Drugs are too chancy. You might miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time.
P.J. O'Rourke
There's a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any over-large concentration of like-minded individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.
P.J. O'Rourke
