P. J. O'Rourke

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights — the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery — hay and a barn for human cattle.

— P. J. O'Rourke education

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

— P. J. O'Rourke man

There are just two rules of governance in a free society: Mind your own business. Keep your hands to yourself. Keep your hands to yourself, Bill. Hillary, mind your own business.

— P. J. O'Rourke society

Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting Hillary in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money — hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

— P. J. O'Rourke money

And 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? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?

— P. J. O'Rourke people

You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

— P. J. O'Rourke men

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

Term limits aren't enough. We need jail.

— P. J. O'Rourke need

All the Trouble in the World. The Lighter Side of Overpopulation, Famine, Ecological Disaster, Ethnic Hatred, Plague and Poverty.

— P. J. O'Rourke logic

A careful reading of 50 Simple Things leaves you wondering whether you're going to die from environmental disaster or intellectual annoyance. Failing either, you can worry yourself to death.

— P. J. O'Rourke death

A pleasant natural environment is a good— a luxury good, philosophical good, a moral goody-good, a good time for all. Whatever, we want it. If we want something, we should pay for it, with our labor or our cash. We shouldn't beg it, steal it, sit around wishing for it, or euchre the government into taking it by force.

— P. J. O'Rourke time

A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty — their power and privilege — to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians

— P. J. O'Rourke art

Advocating the expansion of the powers of the state is treason to mankind, goddamnit!

— P. J. O'Rourke god

Any person who has spent time outdoors actually doing something, such as hunting and fishing as opposed to standing there with a doobie in his mouth, knows nature is not intrinsically healthy.

— P. J. O'Rourke time

Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett.

— P. J. O'Rourke women

Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what's good for people than people do is a swine.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

Asia is the continent rhythm forgot. At best Asian music is off-brand American pop, like Sonny Bono in a karaoke bar. At worst Asian music sounds as if a truck full of wind chimes collided with a stack of empty oil drums during a birdcall contest.

— P. J. O'Rourke music

Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say "I've got cancer" and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy?

— P. J. O'Rourke man

Biotechnology is a worry. What if they take genetic material from wet noodles and blowfish and splice it into politician chromosomes and create a Clinton administration?

— P. J. O'Rourke technology

Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever's special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet: to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press.

— P. J. O'Rourke hate

Crowded as the country is, is overcrowding even its main problem? Hong Kong and Singapore both have greater population densities (14.315 and 12.347 per square mile, respectively) than Bangladesh, and they're called success stories. The same goes for Monaco. In fact, the whole Riviera is packed in August, and neither Malthus nor Ehrlich have complained about the topless beaches of St. Tropez.

— P. J. O'Rourke success

Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don't know much. Say it's ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn't ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids' families? And what is tonight's pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system.

— P. J. O'Rourke science

Even the bad things are better than they used to be. Bad music, for instance, has gotten much briefer. Wagner's Ring Cycle takes four days to perform while "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm" by the Crash Test Dummies lasts little more than three minutes.

— P. J. O'Rourke music

Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free— indeed, sanctimonious— way for "progressives" to be racists.

— P. J. O'Rourke progress

Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.

— P. J. O'Rourke political

Human problems are complex. If something isn't complex it doesn't qualify as problematic. Very simple bad things are not worth troubling ourselves about.

— P. J. O'Rourke man

I guess the argument of contextuality is that anything is okay as long as it's done by people who are sufficiently unlike you.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

I suspect the Haitian Ministry of Health's principal contribution to health in Haiti is providing nice, healthy jobs to those Haitians with the connection to get them.

— P. J. O'Rourke health

I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know.

— P. J. O'Rourke world

Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.

— P. J. O'Rourke ideas

If the politics of disease are to be understood, particularly in the dreadful countries where this understanding is most needed, then the politics of total collapse have to be understood first.

— P. J. O'Rourke politics

If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.

— P. J. O'Rourke nature

Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die. Somalia had become just this kind of spa.

— P. J. O'Rourke loss

In a society where commonweal does not exist, there are no duties, only exactations to be avoided, and no freedoms, only privileges to be grabbed. There can be no such thing as "public services" because nothing in the country is truly public. Everything is somebody's fief. And every fief must be exploited if the exploiter cares to survive.

— P. J. O'Rourke freedom

In Japan people drive on the left. In China people drive on the right. In Vietnam it doesn't matter.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

It's hard to come back from the Balkans and not sound like a Pete Seeger song.

— P. J. O'Rourke song

"Malthus,", says Vice President Al Gore in Earth in the Balance, "was right in predicting that the population would grow geometrically." Al, as the father of four children, should know.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

Man has been breeding livestock for ten thousand years and has yet to come up with a monstrous sheep that can trample buildings and graze a whole golf course for breakfast.

— P. J. O'Rourke live

Mankind is supposed to have evolved in the treetops. But I have examined my sense of balance, the prehensility of my various appendages, and my attitude toward standing on anything higher than, say, political principles, and I have concluded that, personally, I evolved in the backseat of a car.

— P. J. O'Rourke war

Most of the research about species extinction has been conducted on islands because islands are controlled environments and scientists can get drinks with little umbrellas in them there... Island logic also tells us that an increase in habitat size means an increase in number of species. But it doesn't necessarily. You can build your bed as large as you like and still get very few people to sleep with you.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.

— P. J. O'Rourke hope

On Friday, June 12, 1992, 110 heads of state gathered at Riocentro. They were indistinguishable in dress and deportment. Where was biodiversity when we needed it?

— P. J. O'Rourke men

One thing that's certain about going outdoors: When you come back inside, you'll be scratching.

— P. J. O'Rourke you

People who are wise, good, smart, skillful, or hardworking don't need politics, they have jobs.

— P. J. O'Rourke politics

People with a mission to save the earth want the earth to seem worse than it is so their mission will look more important.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet.

— P. J. O'Rourke believe

Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty— their power and privilege— to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by ... politicians.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

Remember, FDA employees are serious about fear. We pay these people to panic about an iota of rodent hair in our chili, even when the recipe calls for it. FDA employees are first-class agonizers, world champions at losing sleep. When Meryl Streep got hysterical about Alar, they actually checked the apples instead of Meryl's head.

— P. J. O'Rourke fear

Saigon is like all the other great modern cities of the world. It's the mess left from people getting rich.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.

— P. J. O'Rourke wit

Somalia is so bad that making a mess improves the place.

— P. J. O'Rourke bad

The morning meal was served in traditional socialist fashion— very slowly, with the courses out of order so that the jelly arrived half an hour after the toast and the coffee didn't come until we'd called for the check. However, it was hard to be angry at a place that had ice cream, beer, and cigarettes on its breakfast menu.

— P. J. O'Rourke men

The observers had a logbook recording the assaults, bombings, and artillery attacks on the area. Each page was ruled in vertical columns: DATE, TIME, LOCATION, DAMAGE, CASUALTIES. The columns headed ACTION TAKEN BY THE UN were completely empty.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements. On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself." In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card. And civilization has always been able to destroy itself. The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy them fine.

— P. J. O'Rourke life

The typical old-fashioned diet was so bad it almost resembled modern dieting.

— P. J. O'Rourke fashion

There is a fine line in the Third World between half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe and half a dozen customs officials waiting for you to offer them a bribe so they can throw you in jail.

— P. J. O'Rourke you

Traffic was like a bad dog. It wasn't important to look both ways when crossing the street; it was important to not show fear.

— P. J. O'Rourke fear

Two key rules of Third World travel: 1. Never run out of whiskey. 2. Never run out of whiskey.

— P. J. O'Rourke travel

Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming.

— P. J. O'Rourke peace

War is a great asshole magnet.

— P. J. O'Rourke great

We tried to find the mayor. His secretary said he was at home. His wife said he was at the office. In Italy or France this would mean His Honor was having an affair. In Chabarovice it probably meant he'd run off to be a busboy in Stuttgart.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.

— P. J. O'Rourke art

When a thing defies physical law, there's usually politics involved.

— P. J. O'Rourke politics

When government does, occasionally, work, it works in an elitist fashion. That is, government is most easily manipulated by people who have money and power already. This is why government benefits usually go to people who don't need benefits from government. Government may make some environmental improvements, but these will be improvements for rich bird-watchers. And no one in government will remember that when poor people go bird-watching they do it at Kentucky Fried Chicken.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It's also closer. We can just step off the sidewalk. And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us. "Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower."

— P. J. O'Rourke time

O'Rourke, P. J. (1996). Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (1st edition ed.). New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. 368 pp.. .

— P. J. O'Rourke youth

Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.

— P. J. O'Rourke you

We’re told cars are dangerous. It’s safer to drive through South Central Los Angeles than to walk there. We’re told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We’re told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it’s hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald’s from a speeding train. And we’re told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?

— P. J. O'Rourke men

O'Rourke, P. J. (1996). Why I Am a Conservative (1st edition ed.). Second Thoughts Books. pp. 24 pp.. 978-1886442085.

— P. J. O'Rourke books

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 is willing to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he will do good with his own money — if a gun is held to his head.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

delivered ,for the twentieth anniversary of the Cato Institute.

— P. J. O'Rourke live

I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.

— P. J. O'Rourke politics

O'Rourke, P. J. (1999). Eat the Rich: A Treatise on Economics (1st edition ed.). New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. 272 pp.. 978-0-87113-760-9.

— P. J. O'Rourke economics

Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking.

— P. J. O'Rourke money

When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state ... This violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people.

— P. J. O'Rourke people

O'Rourke, P. J. (2004). Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism (1st edition ed.). New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. 256 pp.. .

— P. J. O'Rourke peace

The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.

— P. J. O'Rourke ignorance

Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.

— P. J. O'Rourke suffering

O'Rourke, P. J. (2007). On "The Wealth of Nations": Books That Changed the World (1st edition ed.). New York: Atlantic Monthly Press. pp. 242 pp.. .

— P. J. O'Rourke books

When Adam Smith was being incomprehensible, he didn't have the luxury of brief, snappy technical terms as a shorthand for incoherence.

— P. J. O'Rourke being

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If were looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldnt test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

— P J Orourke love

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