P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

There isn't much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.

The Lampoon started in 1970, and I began writing freelance for them around the end of 1971, and then all through '72. They hired me in '73, and I left early in '81. I did everything from low puns to being editor-in-chief.

The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.

Intelligence collection has been given an additional bureaucracy to correct the problems created by too much bureaucracy in intelligence collection.

Some women want the strong silent type, so they can tell him to shut up and rearrange the furniture.

Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.

Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it's cute but boring and expensive.

If the Japanese want to be taken seriously as world financial powers, they'd better quit using the same tailor as variety show chimps.

Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun.

If you're doing a column, you kind of have to. Like in the back of Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly has to find something to be mad about. It's not really the way I approach things.

Wearing a hat implies that you are bald if you are a man and that your hair is dirty if you are a woman.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there.

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.

Just as some things are too strange for fiction, others are too true for journalism.

The purpose of the Senate is to keep 100 middle aged knuckleheads out of the private sector where they can do real harm.

The wonder is that communism lasted so long. But then again, modern poetry lasted a long time, too.

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country.

What use is it to endure the Dutch Rubs and Indian Rope Burns that are politics if you can't obtain mastery over people and give them noogies back?

We have no one to blame for the Kennedys but ourselves. We took the Kennedys to heart of our own accord. And it is my opinion that we did it not because we respected them or thought what they proposed was good, but because they were pretty. We, the electorate, were smitten by this handsome, vivacious family. . . . We wanted to hug their golden tousled heads to our dumpy breasts.

One of the things that makes me a conservative, or a libertarian, or whatever the heck it is that I am - a person who doesn't much like big government - is that I do not like the concentration of the power.

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.

Remember that all tax revenue is the result of holding a gun to somebody's head. Not paying taxes is against the law. If you don't pay your taxes, you'll be fined. If you don't pay the fine, you'll be jailed. If you try to escape from jail, you'll be shot. ... Therefore, every time the government spends money on anything, you have to ask yourself, 'Would I kill my kindly, gray-haired mother for this?'

Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices.

I'm really tired of virtue.

People will tell you anything but what they do is always the truth.

What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.

The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.

War will exist as long as there's a food chain.

Rich white Protestant men have held on to some measure of power in America almost solely by getting women, blacks, and other disadvantaged groups to wear crippling foot fashions. This keeps them too busy with corns and bunions to compete in the job market.

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.

I like to take things that are boring-but-important and try to make them interesting. That was definitely what I was after with Eat The Rich.

I rarely meet a politician that I don't like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.

One of these suburbs is actually named Stalingrad, which goes to show that the French have learned nothing about politics since they guillotined all the smart people in 1793.

The only time a bachelor's bed is made is when it's in the factory.

In Western Australia they don't even know how to make that vital piece of sailboating equipment, the gin and tonic.

Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit

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

I spent almost 25 years as a foreign correspondent, and the world's primary problem is poverty.

The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.

I can think of a number of areas in New York where three acres of nuclear waste would make the neighborhood safer to walk around in than it is now, and better lit.

Collectivism 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.

The key ingredient of politics is the idea that all of society's ills can be cured politically. It's like a cookbook where the recipe for everything is to fry it. The fruit cocktail is fried.

.......the poor of the world cannot be made rich by redistribution of wealth. Poverty can't be eliminated by punishing people who've escaped poverty, taking their money and giving it as a reward to people who have failed to escape. Economic leveling doesn't work. Whether we call it Marxism, Progressive Reform, or Clintonomics, the result is the same slide into the stygian pit. Communists worship Satan; socialists think perdition is a good system run by bad men; and liberals want us to go to hell because it's warm there in the winter.

The American political system is like fast food - mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things and everybody wants some.

Lampoon was a very collegial operation, though "collegial" usually means "friendly" and it wasn't that friendly. But we were tight, like a family.

You can't get something for nothing. Everybody remembers this except politicians.

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.