You can’t destroy America by destroying our elite. Think about America’s elite. Think about it down through history. Destroy our elite, and about half the time, you’re doing us a favor.
P. J. O'ROURKEArab-led Islamic fundamentalism destabilizes nations from Algeria to the Philippines.
More P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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I’ve got a 1990 Porsche 911. It’s just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it.
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Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.
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You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.
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Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.
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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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Head lice have their own animal-rights group, or may as well. The National Pediculosis Association doesn’t exactly advocate letting lice live with dignity, but it does oppose pediculicidal treatments.
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The perpetuation of slavery, the exile and extermination of American Indians, and the passage of Jim Crow laws weren’t carried out at the bidding of a few malefactors of great wealth.
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We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.
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Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.
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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.
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The budget doesn’t have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn’t have much control over the budget.
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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.
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Adam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.
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Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.
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Just because a subject is serious doesn’t mean it doesn’t have plenty of absurdities.
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Supposedly, summer vacation happens because that’s when the kids are home from school, although having the kids home from school is no vacation. And supposedly the kids are home from school because of some vestigial throwback to our agricultural past.
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The world is being run by irresponsible spoiled brats.
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Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the Left.
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The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions.
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The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the ’70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war.
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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.
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A fundamental American question is, ‘What’s the big idea?’
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Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
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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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The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
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The minute somebody joins a committee… they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.
P. J. O'ROURKE