Top 1016 Quotes & Sayings by P. J. O'Rourke - Page 2

Arguing, in the sense of attempting to convince others, has gone out of fashion with conservatives.

Just because a subject is serious doesn't mean it doesn't have plenty of absurdities.

Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the Left.

The foundation of collectivism is simple: There should be no important economic differences among people. No one should be too rich.

Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino's box.

All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin.

Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.

One nice thing about making jokes is that you don't have to prove them.

Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.

Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are - these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.

The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.

Infant mortality and life expectancy are reasonable indicators of general well-being in a society.

I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.

Network television has been attempting to lure viewers for years with its low-interest programming only to have those viewers discover later that their brains are bankrupt.

The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.

New Hampshire polling data are unreliable because, when you call the Granite State's registered Republicans and independents in the middle of dinner and ask them who they're going to vote for, they have a mouth full of mashed potatoes and you can't understand what they say.

Art Nouveau got its inspiration from nature. The Bauhaus got its inspiration from engineering.

There's something about Marxism that brings out warts; the only kind of growth this economic system encourages.

Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.

As a longtime former resident of 15 years in Washington, I wish that everybody would stay off the Mall with their political cause so that we can get out there, you know, and play flag football or Frisbee, or walk the dog or something - you know, which is, you know, what the National Mall should be for, in my personal opinion.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.

Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.

Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.

Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.

The U.S. tax code was written by A students. Every April 15, we have to pay somebody who got an A in accounting to keep ourselves from being sent to jail.

As a former writer for the 'National Lampoon,' I've probably contributed to the sea of sarcasm in which we live.

Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.

Writing on a computer makes saving what's been written too easy. Pretentious lead sentences are kept, not tossed. Instead of sitting surrounded by crumpled paper, the computerized writer has his mistakes neatly stored in digital memory.

The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans are in favor of greater spending, for which the taxpayers will pay.

Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How'd they get so rich? Because they're free.

I've got a 1990 Porsche 911. It's just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it.

Jeans fit the mature male one of two ways, both dirigible in nature. You make a public impression that's either Hindenburg or Goodyear blimp.

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?

My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you're fortunate - and both of us are - you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.

Regulation creates a moral hazard.

The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids.

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.

Bill Clinton is not a hypocrite. If a man believes that it is just and moral to redistribute wealth, there is nothing hypocritical in his attempts to redistribute some of that wealth to himself.

Harvard is the home of American ideas.

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.

Why do elites hate the poor? It's xenophobia. They don't know any poor people - except their off-the-books Brazilian nanny and illegal immigrant cleaning lady from Upper Revolta who don't speak English.

In Israel, waves of anger and fear circulate all the time, but so do jokes and gossip and silky evening breezes. So, too, in America.

We will win an election when all the seats in the House and Senate and the chair behind the desk in the Oval Office and the whole bench of the Supreme Court are filled with people who wish they weren't there.

People say free trade causes dislocation. In actual fact, it's the lowering of trade barriers that causes the dislocation.

Maybe climate change is a threat, and maybe climate change has been tarted up by climatologists trolling for research grant cash. It doesn't matter.

Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats and pyramids of wasted taxpayer money, the TARP funds and shovel-ready stimulus programs of their day.

Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don't count modern civilization.

All previous populist movements were demanding things from governments, whereas the Tea Party is saying, 'Give us less, go away.' That's heartening to see.

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.

If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words 'I don't know.'

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.

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

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