P.J. O'Rourke Quotes
It was Ronald Reagan who used to say that the 10 most frightening words in the English language are, "I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to help."
The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you.
Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.
It's the formulaic studio movies the make money, and when they do, the actors in them are automatically movie stars.
America is the world's policeman, all right -- a big, dumb, mick flatfoot in the middle of the one thing cops dread most, a "domestic disturbance.
Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.
France in August when you can travel through the entire country without encountering a single pesky Frenchman or being bothered with anything that's open for business.
A world government run by the UN will be like getting an old, purblind, half-deaf substitute teacher.
The motorcycle is a device created by the team of God and Darwin to rid the world of useless young males.
Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.
The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.
An emotional man may possess no humor, but a humorous man usually has deep pockets of emotion, sometimes tucked away or forgotten.
All love stories are tales of beginnings. When we talk about falling in love, we go to the beginning, to pinpoint the moment of freefall.
Government conspiracy? They can't even deliver our mail and it's got our address on it and everything!
A politician who commends himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to do good with other peoples' money.
Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.
One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.
The real alternative to power of the rich is not power of the poor. It's just plain power.
Golf combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.
African famine is not a visitation of fate. It is largely man-made, and the men who made it are largely Africans.
There is always tension in women's gymnastics between athleticism, grace, performance, and eros.
The collegiate 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.
What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.
All I am hoping for is to be able to work-I think my best work is still ahead of me-I think all that I have been through in the last several years have only made me a better, more interesting actor.
For toddlers I suggest leaving their mittens on year-round, indoors and out. That way they can't get into aspirin bottles, liquor cabinets, or boxes of kitchen matches.
There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself.
I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a 'learning experience.' Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a 'learning experience.' It makes me feel less stupid.
The idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.
Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.
Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial contest that is about to ensue.
I like to do my principal research in bars, where people are more likely to tell the truth or, at least, lie less convincingly than they do in briefings and books.
Where self-interest is violently suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control which dries up the wellsprings of initiative and creativity.
If we want the whole world to be rich, we need to start loving wealth. In the difference between poverty and plenty, the problem is the pverty, not the difference. Wealth is good.
Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else.
Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.
People ask me about that all the time. They say, "Did you ever think of directing?" And I say, "It's completely out of the question."
I come from a violent background. So I became hard. I realised that I had made myself that way to deal with a feeling of abandonment and shame.
People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it's simply a measurement.
Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.
Whenever government proposes to get involved in the regulation of trade, just be very, very careful about who's behind this proposal, what their motives are.
