As a former writer for the ‘National Lampoon,’ I’ve probably contributed to the sea of sarcasm in which we live.
P. J. O'ROURKEI 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.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
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Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid.
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The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.
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Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.
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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.
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America wasn’t founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.
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In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of ‘I hate strangers and anything that’s different.’
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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.
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When you’re a war correspondent, the reader is for you because the reader is saying, ‘Gee, I wouldn’t want to be doing that.’ They’re on your side.
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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.
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The idea of a stag hunt evokes chivalry – knights in jerkins and hose, ladies on sidesaddles with wimples and billowing dresses, a white stag symbolizing something-or-other, and Robin Hood getting in the way. An actual stag hunt is more like a horseback meeting of a county planning commission.
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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.
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Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
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Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
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I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of the strictures of Ramadan.
P. J. O'ROURKE