Quotes By P. J. O..Rourke

I'm a rather decisive type.

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.

We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.

It's better to make fun of yourself because you've always got someone around to make fun of, and they can't sue you.

Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial contest that is about to ensue.

You may be surprised to discover you're rich, especially if you're broke.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.

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?

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.

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.

The idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

I don't even know which end of a computer one is supposed to gaze into. I've never used a computer.

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.

There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change - or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is - certainly is one of them. But it's low on my list.

Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.

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.

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.

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

There is one thing women can never take away from men. We die sooner.

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

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

I read good. I was an English major.

I'm really tired of virtue.

Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.

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.

I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a "learning experience." Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a "learning experience." It makes me feel less stupid.