P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry.

I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck.

Even newlyweds don't spend much time together, now that few marriages outlast the appliance warranties.

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

They don't like anyone who isn't Korean, and they don't like each other all that much, either. They're hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, "the Irish of Asia".

Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.

Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.

There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.

When Adam Smith was being incomprehensible, he didn't have the luxury of brief, snappy technical terms as a shorthand for incoherence.

There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. Keep your hands to yourself, Bill. Hillary, mind your own business.

There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements. On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself." In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card. And civilization has always been able to destroy itself. The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy them fine.

Foreigners may pretend otherwise, but if English is spoken loudly enough, anyone can understand it, the British included. Actually, there’s no such thing as a foreign language. The world is just filled with people who grunt and squeak instead of speaking sensibly. French may be an exception. But since it’s impossible to figure out what French people are saying, we’ll never know for sure.

Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.

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.