Quotes By P. J. O..Rourke

Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.

There's one more terrifying fact about old people: I'm going to be one soon.

I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, 'Where's the art?' They weren't doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had... maybe I could even quit renting.

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.

One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world - and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East - is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn't there. It has to do with history.

I rarely meet a politician that I don't like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

After all, what is your host's purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present.

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.

I'm a political conservative.

There isn't much room for an outsider point of view in print any more.

Never fight an inanimate object.

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.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

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.

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.

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.

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 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.

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

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

You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

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.