You don’t despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can. – P. J. O’Rourke
Liberals want to live downtown. All over America – in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Georgetown – there are crowds of liberals living in the gritty, ugly, dirty neighborhoods sensible people are trying to flee. – P. J. O’Rourke
Wealth is not a pizza, where if I have too many slices you have to eat the Domino’s box. – P. J. O’Rourke
The First Amendment only says ‘Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.’ It can disrespect all it wants. – P. J. O’Rourke
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective. – P. J. O’Rourke
As a former writer for the ‘National Lampoon,’ I’ve probably contributed to the sea of sarcasm in which we live. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
I write because I like to make things and the only things I am good at making things with are words. – P. J. O’Rourke
America wasn’t founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased. – P. J. O’Rourke
I’m on Medicare now. If I go and have a big operation, it costs me nothing. It should cost me a little. I’m not rich, but I can afford a few grand if I have to have my appendix taken out. I can pitch in a little bit. – P. J. O’Rourke
Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less. – P. J. O’Rourke
The number of American presidential candidates varies with the sunspot cycle and the phases of the moon. – P. J. O’Rourke
I’m old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now. – P. J. O’Rourke
Disney’s House of the Future had the clean simplicity prized in the 1950s as relief from decades of frayed patchwork, jury-rigging, and make-do clutter caused by Depression and war. – P. J. O’Rourke
What would annoy the most people most often? That is the true left-wing test of government intervention. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
For decades in America, there has been an effort to ensure that the rights of those who are not sane are the same as the rights of those who are. – P. J. O’Rourke
Death is so important that God visited death upon his own son, thereby helping us learn right from wrong well enough that we may escape death forever and live eternally in God’s grace. – P. J. O’Rourke
Some day you will be wheeled in for a heart bypass operation, and a surgeon will be the person who is now behind the counter when you renew your car registration at the department of motor vehicles. – P. J. O’Rourke
Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade. – P. J. O’Rourke