P. J. O'Rourke Quotes And Sayings

It's Hard To Be Serious In Life.

Politics Is A Necessary Evil, Or A Necessary Annoyance, A Necessary Conundrum.

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.

All Previous Populist Movements Were Demanding Things From Governments, Whereas The Tea Party Is Saying, 'Give Us Less, Go Away.' That's Heartening To See.

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.

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.

Kids Are Disorganized.

America Is Not A Wily, Sneaky Nation. We Don't Think That Way. We Don't Think Much At All, Thank God.

We Have The British Motor Industry As A Role Model For What Happens When You Try To Save An Industrial Dinosaur. Britain Was The First Country To Industrialise And The First To De-industrialise. We Should Learn From This.

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.

The 1960s Was An Era Of Big Thoughts. And Yet, Amazingly, Each Of These Thoughts Could Fit On A T-shirt.

No Americans Wants To See Somebody Lose Their House Because Of Health Bills. Their Boat? Maybe. Maybe The Boat. But Not The House.

The Tea Party Has Definitely Increased Political Involvement, Not Only Among Tea Party Members But Among People Who Oppose The Tea Party Members. It's Been A General Stimulus.

I Blame Feminism And Facebook For The Death Of The American Automobile. I'm A Republican, So I Blame Everything On Feminism - Or Commies.

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.

Freedom Is For Fun.

Harvard Is The Home Of American Ideas.

Passover Is My Idea Of A Perfect Holiday. Dear God, When You're Handing Out Plagues Of Darkness, Locusts, Hail, Boils, Flies, Lice, Frogs, And Cattle Murrain, And Turning The Nile To Blood And Smiting The Firstborn, Give Me A Pass. And Tell Me When It's Over.

The Car Provided Americans With An Enviable Standard Of Living. You Could Not Get A Steady Job With High Wages And Health And Retirement Benefits Working On The General Livestock Corporation Assembly Line Putting Udders On Cows.

Cars Let Us Out Of The Barn And, While They Were At It, Destroyed The American Nuclear Family. As Anyone Who Has Had An American Nuclear Family Can Tell You, This Was A Relief To All Concerned.

You've Got To Understand, People Are Motivated By Fun. And They Should Be.

I'm Too Tough And Sensitive To Have To Have Some Pubescent Twerp With His Mom's Earring In His Tongue, Who Combs His Hair With Redi-whip And Has An Ani Difranco Tattoo On His Shin, Come Show Me How A Computer Works.

Excessive Speed And Quantity Are, Like Chattiness And Digression, Besetting Sins Of Cyber-assisted Authorship.

By The End Of The 1950s, American Cars Were So Reliable That Their Reliability Went Without Saying Even In Car Ads. Thousands Of Them Bear Testimony To This Today, Still Running On The Roads Of Cuba Though Fueled With Nationalized Venezuelan Gasoline And Maintained With Spit And Haywire.

When I Board An Airplane These Days, All The Middle-aged Men Are Dressed Like Me - When I Was An 8-year-old. They're In Shorts And T-shirts. And It's Not Just On Airplanes. It's In Business Offices, Teachers' Lounges, And Churches.

Jeans Fit The Mature Male One Of Two Ways, Both Dirigible In Nature. You Make A Public Impression That's Either Hindenburg Or Goodyear Blimp.

What Alexander Graham Bell Thought Up Occupied Less Space Than A Flower Vase. Now It's So Small That I Have To Search All My Pockets To Discover I've Received A Spam Text.

I Spend My Days Kneeling In The Muck Of Language, Feeling Around For Gooey Verbs, Nouns, And Modifiers That I Can Squash Together To Make A Blob Of A Sentence That Bears Some Likeness To Reason And Sense.

The Only Advantage To Being A Middle-aged Man Is That When You Put On A Jacket And Tie, You're The Scary Dad. Never Mind That No One Has Had An Actually Scary Dad Since 1966. The Visceral Fear Remains.

Israel Is Slightly Smaller Than New Jersey. Moses In Effect Led The Tribes Of Israel Out Of The District Of Columbia, Parted Chesapeake Bay Near Annapolis, And Wandered For Forty Years In Delaware.

Something That Confirms All Fears And Many Conspiracy Theories About Government Is Finding Out What Our Elected Representatives Would Put Into Law If They Could.

The Idea Of A Stag Hunt Evokes Chivalry - Knights In Jerkins And Hose, Ladies On Sidesaddles With Wimples And Billowing Dresses, A White Stag Symbolizing Something-or-other, And Robin Hood Getting In The Way. An Actual Stag Hunt Is More Like A Horseback Meeting Of A County Planning Commission.

My Generation Of Americans Was The First To Really Care About Racism And Sexism, Not To Mention The I Ching, Plus, Of Course, The Earth.

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.

No Doubt The Ridiculous Politicians Are Right To Like Politics. They Have Found Careers In Which Success Can Be Achieved By Being Ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter Or George W. Bush Rising To The Top Of Any Other Profession.

In Hong Kong There Is Agglomeration Beyond My Fondest Imaginings. The Kowloon District Claims A Population Density Four Times That Of New York City.

To Blame The Existence Of Al Qaeda On Poverty Like Egypt's Is A Slur On The Poor.

Tel Aviv Is New, Built On The Sand Dunes North Of Jaffa In The 1890s, About The Same Time Miami Was Founded. The Cities Bear A Resemblance In Size, Site, Climate, And Architecture, Which Ranges From The Bland To The Fancifully Bland.

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.

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.

Californians Devised A System Of Electricity Sales That Ignored Every Dimension Of The Free Market.

The Number Of American Presidential Candidates Varies With The Sunspot Cycle And The Phases Of The Moon.

Californians Are People Who Insist On Growing Their Own Vegetables, But They Won't Dig Up The Pretty Lawn, Won't Plant Anything For Fear Of Getting Dirty, And They Use Fragrant Bath Salts From The Body Shop Instead Of Smelly Compost.

You Can't Destroy America By Destroying Our Elite. Think About America's Elite. Think About It Down Through History. Destroy Our Elite, And About Half The Time, You're Doing Us A Favor.

Upbeat Is For People Who Want To Feel Good About Their Cause: The Reformers, The Progressives, The Revolutionaries, The Utopians, The Collectivists, And The Rest Of The Altruistic Scum Of The Earth. Why Do These People Want To Feel Good? They Want To Feel Good In Order To Convince Themselves That They Are Good.

Space Has Always Been Confusing To Politics.

The Laws Of The Marketplace Are Physical Laws, And They Don't Become Suspended In A Crisis Any More Than The Law Of Gravity Does.

Rich People Don't Like To Be In The Military. The Shoes Are Ugly And The Uniforms Itch. Rich People Don't Go In Much For Revolution Or Terrorism, Either.

The Words 'Space Age' Have A Quaint, Nostalgic Tone - Sitting On Midcentury Modern Furniture Watching 'The Jetsons.'

Sometimes The Right Response To Evil Is An Appeal To Powerful And Effective Social Organization - An Appeal To Civilization Itself.