I live in rural New Hampshire, and we are, frankly, short on people who are black, gay, Jewish, and Hispanic. In fact, we’re short on people. My town has a population of 301. – P. J. O’Rourke
I like Michael Moore, but I think of him more as a rabble-rouser. On his TV show, when he went to the home of the guy who invented the car alarm and set off all the car alarms on the block… pretty funny. – P. J. O’Rourke
Kabul is a walled city, which sounds romantic except the walls are pre-cast reinforced concrete blast barriers, 10 feet tall and 15 feet long and moved into place with cranes. The walls are topped with sandbags, and the sandbags are topped with guard posts from which gun barrels protrude. – P. J. O’Rourke
The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in melodramatic plots. – P. J. O’Rourke
There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans: race and religion. – P. J. O’Rourke
Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun. – P. J. O’Rourke
After the events of the 20th century, God, quite reasonably, left Europe. But He’s still here in the United States. – P. J. O’Rourke
Politicians will talk strategy and tactics and policies and programs until they’re blue in the face, or you strangle them and they turn blue. – P. J. O’Rourke
Will Generation X and the Millennials do a better job running the world than the boomers have? Let’s hope so. – P. J. O’Rourke
When I was fifteen, I dreamed of living in the big city, as many a young person does if he is artistic and sensitive. By ‘artistic and sensitive’ I mean short, skinny, unkissed, bad at sports, and carrying a C average in high school. – P. J. O’Rourke
I don’t even know which end of a computer one is supposed to gaze into. I’ve never used a computer. – P. J. O’Rourke
I think it’s always easy to be sympathetic to parts of the government in detail; in their concrete manifestations. Because obviously, we don’t have government for no reason. – P. J. O’Rourke
You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city – you don’t need to go to Beirut for that – but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective. – P. J. O’Rourke
America has to act. But, when America acts, other nations accuse us of being ‘hegemonistic’, of engaging in ‘unilateralism’, of behaving as if we’re the only nation on earth that counts. We are. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it’s probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are. – P. J. O’Rourke
Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative. – P. J. O’Rourke
When you pay a hospital bill, you’re really paying two hospital bills – one bill for you because you have a job and/or insurance and can pay the hospital. and another bill, which is tacked onto your bill, to cover the medical expenses of someone who doesn’t have a job and/or insurance and can’t pay the hospital. – P. J. O’Rourke
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. – P. J. O’Rourke
Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot. – P. J. O’Rourke
People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it’s simply a measurement. – P. J. O’Rourke
Politics is – once in a while – a forum for serious debate about political philosophy. – P. J. O’Rourke