You’re never going to read ‘The Wealth of Nations,’ and you shouldn’t, really. It’s 900 pages.
P. J. O'ROURKEExplosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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. O'ROURKE -
Stupid is a great force in human affairs.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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 -
The world is being run by irresponsible spoiled brats.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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. O'ROURKE -
If you spend 72 hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter. Either that or you’re President Obama.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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. O'ROURKE -
The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that’s the point.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
When elites see a homeless person in the gutter, they assume he’s saving a parking place.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE






