Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan. – P. J. O’Rourke
Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed. – P. J. O’Rourke
As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one’s friends’ and relatives’ children. – P. J. O’Rourke
The job of the president of the United States is to talk to the public, is to explain to them. Now, some presidents talk too much, like Bill Clinton. Some presidents try to talk but don’t know how, like George Bush senior. – P. J. O’Rourke
Pete Seeger is a modest, unassuming, cheerful, and kind-natured man. He’s a good folk singer, if you can stand folk singing. And he’s such an excellent banjo player that you almost don’t wish you had a pair of wire cutters. – P. J. O’Rourke
Even the dumber parts of our government are not run by idiots. These are ordinary people like us, doing a job. By and large, they’re trying to do it as well as they can. Or at least as often as people in the private sector try to do as well as they can. – P. J. O’Rourke
Obama, in pursuit of power, has been as greedy and irresponsible as any Wall Street tycoon in pursuit of money. – P. J. O’Rourke
I don’t mind America becoming a Third World country. The weather is better in the Third World than it is where I live in New Hampshire. And household help will be much cheaper. – P. J. O’Rourke
I have never been to a museum in Hong Kong, or a movie or a play. I’ve never gone club-hopping. I’ve never taken the tram to Victoria Peak. – P. J. O’Rourke
I’ve never been able to get it straight about what these people who are worried about the trade deficit are worried about. – P. J. O’Rourke
Californians are people who insist on growing their own vegetables, but they won’t dig up the pretty lawn, won’t plant anything for fear of getting dirty, and they use fragrant bath salts from The Body Shop instead of smelly compost. – P. J. O’Rourke
The minute somebody joins a committee… they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee. – P. J. O’Rourke
Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid. – P. J. O’Rourke
When the government runs out of lenders, it can do something that households are forbidden to do: print money. – P. J. O’Rourke
There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences. – P. J. O’Rourke
If I were a congressman who had voted for the American Jobs Creation Act of 2004, I’d claim it was forced on our country by a sinister international organization. – P. J. O’Rourke
I’m too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom’s earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
Soccer matches should be something special, something people eagerly look forward to, something that brightens life. – P. J. O’Rourke