You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. ... Government contains impure ingredients - as anybody who's looked at Congress can tell you. ... government practices deceptive advertising. And the merest glance at the federal budget is enough to convict the government of perjury, extortion, and fraud. ... in a nutshell: government should be against the law. Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.
P. J. O'RourkeFinland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How'd they get so rich? Because they're free.
P. J. O'RourkeYou know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.
P. J. O'RourkeThe 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.
P. J. O'RourkeThere are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.
P. J. O'RourkeThen there was LSD, which was supposed to make you think you could fly. I remember it made you think you couldn't stand up, and mostly it was right.
P. J. O'RourkeCollectivism doesn't work because it's based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person's "fair share" of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless.
P. J. O'Rourke