The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas – fascism, communism, the atomic bomb.
P. J. O'ROURKEJust because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
-
-
Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization – an appeal to civilization itself.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Everybody is xenophobic to an extent.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as ‘caring’ and ‘sensitive’ because he wants to expand the government’s charitable programs is merely saying that he’s willing to try to do good with other people’s money.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Ending wars is very simple if you surrender.
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 -
I believe in God. God created the world.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Wealth brings great benefits to the world. Rich people are heros.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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. O'ROURKE -
Kuwait City is not gorgeous, actually, but it’s got a kind of Epcot Center thing going for it. It’s not pretty. But it’s striking, I’ll give it that. It’s not as over-the-top as Abu Dhabi or Dubai. But nearly.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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. O'ROURKE -
A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
P. J. O'ROURKE -
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.
P. J. O'ROURKE -
I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.
P. J. O'ROURKE