P. J. O'Rourke Quotes And Sayings

Seriousness Is Stupidity Sent To College.

Feeling Good About Government Is Like Looking On The Bright Side Of Any Catastrophe. When You Quit Looking On The Bright Side, The Catastrophe Is Still There.

There's Something About Marxism That Brings Out Warts; The Only Kind Of Growth This Economic System Encourages.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan Is The Archetypal Extremely Smart Person Who Went Into Politics Anyway Instead Of Doing Something Worthwhile For His Country.

I Realised The Bohemian Life Was Not For Me. I Would Look Around At My Friends, Living Like Starving Artists, And Wonder, 'Where's The Art?' They Weren't Doing Anything. And There Was So Much Interesting Stuff To Do, So Much Fun To Be Had... Maybe I Could Even Quit Renting.

Politics Is The Attempt To Achieve Power And Prestige Without Merit.

The Bible Is Very Clear About One Thing: Using Politics To Create Fairness Is A Sin.

If We Heard That Somebody Starved To Death In Sweden Or Switzerland, We Would Be Shocked.

Jimmy Carter Was - He Still - He Remains To This Day America's Most Ex Of Ex-presidents. You Just Can't Believe That We Elected This Doofus. He Was A Bright Enough Guy And Sort Of Well-meaning. But He Was About As Prepared To Be President Of The United States As Your Goofy Old Uncle, You Know, The One That Memorises Baseball Statistics.

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.

Guns Are The Ultimate Bulwark Against Government Misbehavior.

Once You've Built The Big Machinery Of Political Power, Remember You Won't Always Be The One To Run It.

Will Generation X And The Millennials Do A Better Job Running The World Than The Boomers Have? Let's Hope So.

People Say, 'Oh, Politics Is So Polarized Today,' And I'm Thinking... '1861, That Was Polarized.'

The Problem With Public School Is Not Overcrowding In The Classroom. The Problem Is Not Teacher Unions. The Problem Is Not Underfunding Or Lack Of Computer Equipment. The Problem Is Your Damn Kids.

The Best And Brightest Don't Go Into Politics. The Best And Brightest Are At Goldman Sachs.

The 20th Century Was A Test Bed For Big Ideas - Fascism, Communism, The Atomic Bomb.

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.

Art Nouveau Got Its Inspiration From Nature. The Bauhaus Got Its Inspiration From Engineering.

Being A Humorist Is Not A Voluntary Thing. You Can Tell This Because In A Situation Where Saying A Funny Thing Will Cause A Lot Of Trouble, A Humorist Will Still Say The Funny Thing. No Matter How Inappropriate.

The More Aspects Of Life That Can Be Moved From Private Reign To Public Realm, The Better It Is For Politics.

Gun Violence Has Cost Us Too Many Political Leaders, And Hardly Ever The Worst Ones.

I Have Never Been To A Museum In Hong Kong, Or A Movie Or A Play. I've Never Gone Club-hopping. I've Never Taken The Tram To Victoria Peak.

What Enron Was Doing, What Caused Investors To Embrace It In A Rapture Of Baffled Awe, Was Hiding Debt.

The Prevalence Of Mobile Homes Does Not Correspond With The Prevalence Of Poverty, Or With Much Of Anything Else. All That Can Be Confidently Said About America's Mobile Homes Is That They Are Massed In Places Where You Wouldn't Want To Be In One. Florida's Mobile Homes Lie Athwart The Path Of Hurricanes. Georgia's Are In The Way Of Tornadoes.

The Foundation Of Collectivism Is Simple: There Should Be No Important Economic Differences Among People. No One Should Be Too Rich.

If It Were Not For Government Regulation Of Big Corporations, Executives At Companies Like Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, They Could Have Cheated Investors Out Of Millions.

A Friend Of Mine At The American Enterprise Institute Says There Are Two Parties: The Silly Party And The Stupid Party. I'm Too Old For The Silly Party, So I Had To Join The Stupid Party.

The Two Most Frightening Words In Washington Are 'Bipartisan Consensus.' Bipartisan Consensus Is When My Doctor And My Lawyer Agree With My Wife That I Need Help.

There Are Two Factors In American Politics That May Seem Strange To Europeans: Race And Religion.

War Diminishes Both Civil And Economic Rights.

Democrats Hate America Being A World Power Because World Power Gives Power To The Nation Instead Of To Democrats.

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.

I'm Not A Tech-savvy Parent. I Communicate With My Children Via The Old-media Format Called Yelling.

If You Spend 72 Hours In A Place You've Never Been, Talking To People Whose Language You Don't Speak About Social, Political, And Economic Complexities You Don't Understand, And You Come Back As The World's Biggest Know-it-all, You're A Reporter. Either That Or You're President Obama.

Banning Paper And Plastic And Making Shoppers Carry Their Groceries Home In Their Mouths Like Dogs Is Just The Thing To Make A Little Tin Humanist In The Obama West Wing Think He's Admiral Of The Uzbek Navy.

Some People Have Facts; These Can Be Proven. Some People Have Theories; These Can Be Disproven. But People With Opinions Are Mindless And Have Their Minds Made Up About It.

There's A Love Of Rhetorical Skill In The Muslim World. Osama Bin Laden Doesn't Just Go On Tape Cassettes And Say, 'America Sucks.' He Recites Poetry; He Finds Things That 'America Sucks' Rhymes With.

I Grew Up Going To Public School, And They Were Huge Public Schools. I Went To A School That Had 3,200 Kids, And I Had Grade School Classes With 40-some Kids. Discipline Was Rigid. Most Of The Learning Was Rote. It Worked.

A Penny Will Not Buy A Penny Postcard Or A Penny Whistle Or A Single Piece Of Penny Candy. It Will Not Even, If You're Managing The U.s. Mint, Buy A Penny.

Tom Delay May Or May Not Have Broken Campaign Finance Laws, But He Did His Best To Look Like He Was Breaking Them.

Watching Republicans In Washington Is Like Watching Lemmings, If Lemmings Jumped Into Cesspools Instead Of Off Cliffs.

Of All The American Educational System's Problems, None Is More Severe Than The Academic Year Beginning Before Labor Day.

All Religions Must Be Made Child-proof. Our Teachers' Unions Have Done Good Work In This Field, K Through 12. Delaying First Communions And Bar Mitzvahs Until Age 21 Would Be Another Positive Step.

All Religious Believers Should Be Licensed To Make Sure That They Are Competent To Hold Opinions And Viewpoints And That They Don't Believe In Just Any Old Thing, Such As Creationism Or A Flat Tax.

Crazy Old People Are Our Entire Source Of Polling Information.

Until I Carried My Wife Off To New Hampshire, She Defined Wilderness As The Bronx.

Politics Won't Allow For The Truth.

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.

Adam Smith's Huge Failure Was The Fact That He Did Not Foresee The Industrial Revolution.