Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke

I was never in the office [of Rolling Stone]. It was very different from Lampoon, where we spent a lot of time together socially, which is to say "drunk."

I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.

In Israel, waves of anger and fear circulate all the time, but so do jokes and gossip and silky evening breezes. So, too, in America.

The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.

Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don't need any of those things.

A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.

Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it.

I'm old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.

Not much was really invented during the Renaissance, if you don't count modern civilization.

Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.

The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer's cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage.

Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs.

If you want to join the Republican party, they have to let you in. There's nothing they can do about it. I mean, if Republicans will take Al D'Amato, they'll take anybody.

I knew Hunter Thompson since the '70s, and I loved him, but he would wear me out as I got older.

Harvard is the home of American ideas.

Californians devised a system of electricity sales that ignored every dimension of the free market.

Demolishing pretensions, especially worthy ones, is a hallmark of the baby boom.

Think what evil creeps liberals would be if their plans to enfeeble the individual, exhaust the economy, impede the rule of law, and cripple national defense were guided by a coherent ideology instead of smug ignorance.

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it is a sophisticated romantic comedy set in Paris.'

Charles McCarry is the best modern writer on the subject of intrigue - by the breadth of Alan Furst, by the fathom of Eric Ambler, by any measure.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

The C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews.

Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.

People say free trade causes dislocation. In actual fact, it's the lowering of trade barriers that causes the dislocation.