A friend of mine at the American Enterprise Institute says there are two parties: the silly party and the stupid party. I’m too old for the silly party, so I had to join the stupid party. – P. J. O’Rourke
There are a few things that people all around the world need to admit to themselves. Trade restraints slow economic growth, the euro is not a reserve currency, and scoreless sports ties are boring. – P. J. O’Rourke
Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading. – P. J. O’Rourke
The idea of a stag hunt evokes chivalry – knights in jerkins and hose, ladies on sidesaddles with wimples and billowing dresses, a white stag symbolizing something-or-other, and Robin Hood getting in the way. An actual stag hunt is more like a horseback meeting of a county planning commission. – P. J. O’Rourke
You 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’Rourke
Head lice have their own animal-rights group, or may as well. The National Pediculosis Association doesn’t exactly advocate letting lice live with dignity, but it does oppose pediculicidal treatments. – P. J. O’Rourke
I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it. – P. J. O’Rourke
The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions. – P. J. O’Rourke
You’re not a baby boomer if you don’t have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate. – P. J. O’Rourke
The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb. – P. J. O’Rourke
Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty. – P. J. O’Rourke
Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper. – P. J. O’Rourke
In Hong Kong there is agglomeration beyond my fondest imaginings. The Kowloon district claims a population density four times that of New York City. – P. J. O’Rourke
The prevalence of mobile homes does not correspond with the prevalence of poverty, or with much of anything else. All that can be confidently said about America’s mobile homes is that they are massed in places where you wouldn’t want to be in one. Florida’s mobile homes lie athwart the path of hurricanes. Georgia’s are in the way of tornadoes. – P. J. O’Rourke
Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you’re handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood and smiting the firstborn, give me a pass. And tell me when it’s over. – P. J. O’Rourke
I think that humor has become a principle means of communication among Americans about politics. – P. J. O’Rourke
All religions must be made child-proof. Our teachers’ unions have done good work in this field, K through 12. Delaying first communions and bar mitzvahs until age 21 would be another positive step. – P. J. O’Rourke
The laws of the marketplace are physical laws, and they don’t become suspended in a crisis any more than the law of gravity does. – P. J. O’Rourke
As murderous industrial magnates go, Alfred Nobel is right up there with Ray Kroc, franchiser of McDonald’s. – P. J. O’Rourke
Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it. – P. J. O’Rourke
The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for politics. – P. J. O’Rourke
There’s something about Marxism that brings out warts; the only kind of growth this economic system encourages. – P. J. O’Rourke
My life would have gone along perfectly well, politically speaking, if it hadn’t been for girls. – P. J. O’Rourke
America’s public schools have served their purpose. Free and compulsory education was good for a somewhat unpromising young nation. – P. J. O’Rourke
By the end of the 1950s, American cars were so reliable that their reliability went without saying even in car ads. Thousands of them bear testimony to this today, still running on the roads of Cuba though fueled with nationalized Venezuelan gasoline and maintained with spit and haywire. – P. J. O’Rourke
