1
There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380 SL convertible.P. J. ORourke
2
Libertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.P. J. ORourke
3
Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.P. J. ORourke
4
I think that humor has become a principle means of communication among Americans about politics.P. J. ORourke
5
Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.P. J. ORourke
6
The idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.P. J. ORourke
7
Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.P. J. ORourke
8
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. ORourke
9
Children live in the only successful Marxist state ever created: the family. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' is the family's practice as well as its theory. Even with today's scattershot patterns of marriage and parenting, a family is collectivist to a more than North Korean degree.P. J. ORourke
10
Horses and horsepower alike are about status and being cool.P. J. ORourke
11
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. ORourke
12
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. ORourke
13
The purpose of sports - even foreign sports - is not to bore people.P. J. ORourke
14
What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text.P. J. ORourke
15
A 'farm' today means 100, 000 chickens in a space the size of a Motel 6 shower stall.P. J. ORourke
16
Space has always been confusing to politics.P. J. ORourke
17
The words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.'P. J. ORourke
18
Obama's space policy doesn't differ much from George W. Bush's.P. J. ORourke
19
Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There's more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it's awfully close to human.P. J. ORourke
20
Don't send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.P. J. ORourke
21
A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative. Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too.P. J. ORourke
22
To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You'd better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.P. J. ORourke
23
Let's reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools - and use it on the teachers.P. J. ORourke
24
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. ORourke
25
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.P. J. ORourke
26
If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas.P. J. ORourke
27
If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.P. J. ORourke
28
I blame feminism and Facebook for the death of the American automobile. I'm a Republican, so I blame everything on feminism - or commies.P. J. ORourke
29
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.P. J. ORourke
30
Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I'm not even sure we can draw lessons from them.P. J. ORourke
31
I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.P. J. ORourke
32
On inspection, Gaudi's architecture isn't whimsical at all.P. J. ORourke
33
Tel Aviv is new, built on the sand dunes north of Jaffa in the 1890s, about the same time Miami was founded. The cities bear a resemblance in size, site, climate, and architecture, which ranges from the bland to the fancifully bland.P. J. ORourke
34
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.P. J. ORourke
35
I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3, 200 kids, and I had grade school classes with 40-some kids. Discipline was rigid. Most of the learning was rote. It worked.P. J. ORourke
36
The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.P. J. ORourke
37
The First Amendment only says 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' It can disrespect all it wants.P. J. ORourke
38
If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.P. J. ORourke
39
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.P. J. ORourke
40
Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.P. J. ORourke
41
Most people sort of enjoy going to work because of the socialisation, a chance to flirt with co-workers and so on, but actually hate the job they do.P. J. ORourke
42
The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer's cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage.P. J. ORourke
43
Call a man 'ignorant, ' and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.P. J. ORourke
44
Public schools helped create the idea of America and inculcate Americans with a few rudiments of knowledge. To judge by that very American item, the Internet, a few rudiments is all anyone cares to have.P. J. ORourke
45
Never wear anything that panics the cat.P. J. ORourke
46
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. ORourke
47
Tom DeLay may or may not have broken campaign finance laws, but he did his best to look like he was breaking them.P. J. ORourke
48
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. ORourke
49
Medical researchers don't know much about head lice because they don't much care. The reason that they don't much care is, paradoxically, that they know a lot. That is, they know one important thing: there is no evidence that head lice transmit disease.P. J. ORourke
50
Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies, the green grazing in the valley of the River Exe would be gone. The handsome agricultural landscape of which the British are so proud, carefully husbanded since Boudicca's day, would be replaced by natural growth. The most likely growth is real-estate developments.P. J. ORourke
51
If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.P. J. ORourke
52
Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.P. J. ORourke
53
Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.P. J. ORourke
54
No Americans wants to see somebody lose their house because of health bills. Their boat? Maybe. Maybe the boat. But not the house.P. J. ORourke
55
The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the General Livestock Corporation assembly line putting udders on cows.P. J. ORourke
56
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.P. J. ORourke
57
Health care's not about insurance! Health care's about getting treatment.P. J. ORourke
58
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. ORourke
59
I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements.P. J. ORourke
60
Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.P. J. ORourke
61
Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.P. J. ORourke
62
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. ORourke
63
The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then a one-room apartment above it. There's street after street after street of that stuff.P. J. ORourke
64
There is the love and marriage and family kind of happiness, which is exceedingly boring to describe but nonetheless is important to have and dreadful not to have.P. J. ORourke
65
Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.P. J. ORourke
66
Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.P. J. ORourke
67
Never fight an inanimate object.P. J. ORourke
68
Being a humorist is not a voluntary thing. You can tell this because in a situation where saying a funny thing will cause a lot of trouble, a humorist will still say the funny thing. No matter how inappropriate.P. J. ORourke
69
Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.P. J. ORourke
70
Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.P. J. ORourke
71
The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.P. J. ORourke
72
People say, 'Oh, politics is so polarized today, ' and I'm thinking... '1861, that was polarized.'P. J. ORourke
73
Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.P. J. ORourke
74
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.P. J. ORourke
75
The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.P. J. ORourke
76
Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.P. J. ORourke
77
The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for politics.P. J. ORourke
78
The problem, when comparing contemporary television to television in 1974, is that TV has become not just bad but sad.P. J. ORourke
79
I understand Twitter has become popular among politicians. This technology allows them to stay in perpetual contact with their constituents. The electorate now has instant information about what politicians have been up to.P. J. ORourke
80
My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't evil or anything, but he was worthless.P. J. ORourke
81
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. ORourke
82
I just wasn't cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I'm more of an Irish Setter Dad.P. J. ORourke
83
If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, they could have cheated investors out of millions.P. J. ORourke
84
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. ORourke
85
If you ask the government to solve all of your problems, it's a bit like asking your wife to cook and clean, to raise the children, to hold down a second job to help with the family finances, to keep her parents happy and well and keep your parents happy and well, and to also - to do the lawn and clean the gutters.P. J. ORourke
86
Something that confirms all fears and many conspiracy theories about government is finding out what our elected representatives would put into law if they could.P. J. ORourke
87
I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom.P. J. ORourke
88
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. ORourke
89
We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup holders. Most of it has to do with urban sprawl. What began as pleasure ends up in necessity, as so many things do.P. J. ORourke
90
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. ORourke
91
I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business towards Japan. And yet I remember how the car workers lived in the neighborhood that I grew up in. My father was a car salesman, and I remember how we lived. I remember how modestly we lived.P. J. ORourke
92
I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.P. J. ORourke
93
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. ORourke
94
When I'm in the car, I want the only one shouting to be me.P. J. ORourke
95
Cars let us out of the barn and, while they were at it, destroyed the American nuclear family. As anyone who has had an American nuclear family can tell you, this was a relief to all concerned.P. J. ORourke
96
My whole family can talk. They are all car salesmen. They are all funny.P. J. ORourke
97
The killjoys initiated automobile crash standards so rigorous that we can't buy a car that hasn't been dropped from the top of a phone pole with our whole family strapped inside.P. J. ORourke
98
The Nobel Peace Prize has always been a joke - albeit a grim one. Alfred Bernhard Nobel famously invented dynamite and felt sorry about it.P. J. ORourke
99
They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'P. J. ORourke
100
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. ORourke