Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke

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.

Regulation creates a moral hazard.

As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children.

The bar is set pretty low if you want to be a hip, accessible conservative.

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.

Teasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.

A humorist doesn't really do that much note-taking.

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.

I've never been able to get it straight about what these people who are worried about the trade deficit are worried about.

The Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.

There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It's going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it's the Democrats.

Richard Nixon was the best thing that ever happened to journalism. I mean this guy was wonderful. Just when you thought he could get no worse, he got worse.

Even the most left-wing politicians worship wealth creation - as the political-action-committee collection plate is passed.

Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.

College professors used to be badly paid and worth it. Colleges used to be modest institutions; they should go back to being modest institutions.

The words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.'

I'm too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom's earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.

Writing on a computer makes saving what's been written too easy. Pretentious lead sentences are kept, not tossed. Instead of sitting surrounded by crumpled paper, the computerized writer has his mistakes neatly stored in digital memory.

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.

I'll be 56 this year, I've got two kids, and I think it's probably time to go back to writing one-glove jokes.

Jesse Jackson was spending time with his family, or families.

The wonder is that communism lasted so long. But then again, modern poetry lasted a long time, too.

The only time a bachelor's bed is made is when it's in the factory.

I think in the [Bill] Clinton era, if people hadn't been spending vast amounts of time attacking Clinton, they would have found that they had essentially the same problems as they do now.