P. J. O'Rourke quotes - page 3

One nice thing about the Third World, you don't have to fasten your seat belt. (Or stop smoking. Or cut down on saturated fats.) It takes a lot off your mind when average life expectancy is forty-five minutes. (P. J. O'Rourke)
And the Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen? View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
To really enjoy drugs you've got to want to get out of where you are. But there are some wheres that are harder to get out of than others. This is the drug-taking problem for adults. Teenage weltschmerz is easy to escape. But what drug will get a grown-up out of, for instance, debt? View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
The typical old-fashioned diet was so bad it almost resembled modern dieting. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
The real truth about children is they don't speak the language very well. They're physically uncoordinated. And they are ignorant of our elaborate ideas about right and wrong. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Never serve oysters during a month that has no paycheck in it. (P. J. O'Rourke)
Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting Hillary in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money - hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
The number of American presidential candidates varies with the sunspot cycle and the phases of the moon. Being a Republican, I'm backing Hillary Clinton. Because she could lose. The reason is not that she's a woman. The reason is that she's the particular woman who taught the 4th grade class that every man in America wished he were dead in. Hillary Clinton is Lucy holding the football for Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton is 'America's ex-wife. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
In Western Australia they don't even know how to make that vital piece of sailing-boat equipment, the gin and tonic. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
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. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
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. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
The real slums are another matter. The bad parts of Tondo are as bad as any place I've seen, ancient, filthy houses swarmed with the poor and stinking of sewage and trash. But there are worse parts- squatter areas where people live under cardboard, in shipping crates, behind tacked-up newspapers. Dad would march you straight to the basement with a hairbrush in his hand if he caught you keeping your hamster cage like this. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily. (P. J. O'Rourke)
Jewishness cropped up and has never successfully been put down since. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
The morning meal was served in traditional socialist fashion- very slowly, with the courses out of order so that the jelly arrived half an hour after the toast and the coffee didn't come until we'd called for the check. However, it was hard to be angry at a place that had ice cream, beer, and cigarettes on its breakfast menu. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die. Somalia had become just this kind of spa. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke
Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation's capital, begin thinking of themselves as participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers. View quote
P. J. O'Rourke