P. J. O'Rourke Quotes And Sayings

Inside Every Sancho Panza There's A Don Quixote Struggling To Get Out.

Politicians Are Wonderful People As Long As They Stay Away From Things They Don't Understand, Such As Working For A Living.

The Anti-individualist Enemies That Ayn Rand Battled Are Still The Enemy, But They've Shifted Their Line Of Attack. Political Collectivists Are No Longer Much Interested In Taking Things Away From The Wealthy And Creative.

The Idea Of A News Broadcast Once Was To Find Someone With Information And Broadcast It. The Idea Now Is To Find Someone With Ignorance And Spread It Around.

The French Are A Smallish, Monkey-looking Bunch And Not Dressed Any Better, On Average, Than The Citizens Of Baltimore.

Always Read Something That Will Make You Look Good If You Die In The Middle Of It.

I Think The Baby Boom Has Enjoyed Itself, Maybe Sometimes A Little Too Much, And We're Continuing To Enjoy Ourselves, Maybe A Little Too Much.

Teasing And A Sense Of Humor, If You Can Develop That In Your Kids, And If You Can Exercise It With The Kids, Just Makes For A Pleasanter Atmosphere.

I Spent A Lot Of Time Behind The Iron Curtain, And Their Cars Were Abysmal.

College Professors Used To Be Badly Paid And Worth It. Colleges Used To Be Modest Institutions; They Should Go Back To Being Modest Institutions.

I Knew Hunter Thompson Since The '70s, And I Loved Him, But He Would Wear Me Out As I Got Older.

I Like Michael Moore, But I Think Of Him More As A Rabble-rouser. On His Tv Show, When He Went To The Home Of The Guy Who Invented The Car Alarm And Set Off All The Car Alarms On The Block... Pretty Funny.

Catchphrases Flourish In Contemporary American English.

America Has To Act. But, When America Acts, Other Nations Accuse Us Of Being 'Hegemonistic', Of Engaging In 'Unilateralism', Of Behaving As If We're The Only Nation On Earth That Counts. We Are.

Maybe Climate Change Is A Threat, And Maybe Climate Change Has Been Tarted Up By Climatologists Trolling For Research Grant Cash. It Doesn't Matter.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look. It Works In Reverse, Too. When I See A Kid With Three Or Four Rings In His Nose, I Know There Is Absolutely Nothing Extraordinary About That Person.

Political Leaders Are Expert At Saying Nothing.

Charles Mccarry Is The Best Modern Writer On The Subject Of Intrigue - By The Breadth Of Alan Furst, By The Fathom Of Eric Ambler, By Any Measure.

Explosion Of Positive Rights Started In 1932 With The Election Of Roosevelt.

I'm On Medicare Now. If I Go And Have A Big Operation, It Costs Me Nothing. It Should Cost Me A Little. I'm Not Rich, But I Can Afford A Few Grand If I Have To Have My Appendix Taken Out. I Can Pitch In A Little Bit.

Just Because A Subject Is Serious Doesn't Mean It Doesn't Have Plenty Of Absurdities.

The Beauty Of Democracy Is That An Average, Random, Unremarkable Citizen Can Lead It.

My Dad Died When I Was Young; My Mom Remarried With More Haste Than Sense To A Fellow... He Wasn't Evil Or Anything, But He Was Worthless.

I Have No Idea If Some Societies, Anthropologically Speaking, Aren't Really Suited For Democracy. I Don't Think That's True.

The People Who Despise America Are The Editors Of The 'New Statesman.' Their Green-card Applications Must Have Been Turned Down.

Everybody Is Xenophobic To An Extent.

More Modern Poetry Is Written Than Read.

Predicting Innovation Is Something Of A Self-canceling Exercise: The Most Probable Innovations Are Probably The Least Innovative.

Americans Are Good At Pursuing Happiness. And The Americans Who Pursue Happiness Most Diligently Show That We're Also Good At Running It Down And Killing It.

A Hat Should Be Taken Off When You Greet A Lady And Left Off For The Rest Of Your Life. Nothing Looks More Stupid Than A Hat.

The Young Are Adept At Learning, But Even More Adept At Avoiding It.

In Thirteen Years, Every Aspect Of The Universe Can Change - Ask A Thirteen-year-old.

Some People Think That Welfare Reform Should Have Hurt Bill Clinton With Black Voters.

I Myself Am A Parent In A Small Business. Number Of Employees: One.

Maybe The Real Secret To America's Greatness Is That We Hate One Another.

Medical Researchers Don't Know Much About Head Lice Because They Don't Much Care. The Reason That They Don't Much Care Is, Paradoxically, That They Know A Lot. That Is, They Know One Important Thing: There Is No Evidence That Head Lice Transmit Disease.

We Americans, Who Invented Traffic, Are Always Being Startled By The Forms Into Which It Has Evolved Around The World.

Everybody Knows How To Raise Children, Except The People Who Have Them.

The Communist Bloc Of Old Was A Study In The Failure Of Failure. Losers In The Soviet Economy Were The People At The End Of The Long Lines For Consumer Goods. Worse Losers Were The People Who Had Spent Hours Getting To The Head Of The Line, Only To Be Told That The Goods Were Unavailable.

Our Regulatory Bodies Strive To Create Honest Dealings, Fair Trades, And A Situation In Which No One Has An Advantage Over Anyone Else. But Human Beings Aren't Honest. And All Trades Are Made Because One Person Thinks He's Getting The Better Of The Other, And The Other Person Thinks The Same.

A Person Has Got To Balance Work And Life And Family In Order To Be A Balanced Person.

Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

Wealth Brings Great Benefits To The World. Rich People Are Heros.

We Did Not Become Libertarians Because We Are Altruists.

There Is Only One Thing That Gives Me Hope As A Republican, And That Is The Democrats. It's Going To Be Hard To Do A Worse Job Running American Than The Republicans Have, But If Anybody Can Do It, It's The Democrats.

People Are Not Ants Or Bees. We Do Not Reason Or Love Or Live Or Die Collectively.

Stupid Is A Great Force In Human Affairs.

The Difference Between American Parties Is Actually Simple. Democrats Are In Favor Of Higher Taxes To Pay For Greater Spending, While Republicans Are In Favor Of Greater Spending, For Which The Taxpayers Will Pay.

'You're Stupid,' Is Not Something Even His Most Severe Critics Usually Say To President Barack Obama.

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.