Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke

Mikhail Gorbachev was the Jimmy Carter of the Communist bloc. The Russians hate him.

Lyndon Johnson faced some clear moral issues.

I'm not a tech-savvy parent. I communicate with my children via the old-media format called yelling.

I live in New Hampshire. We're in favor of global warming. Eleven hundred more feet of sea-level rises? I've got beachfront property. You tell us up there, 'By the end of the century, New York City could be underwater,' and we say, 'Your point is?'

My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't evil or anything, but he was worthless.

The one thing that's terrible about traveling for fun is writing about it.

The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there's a reason for that - the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent - No Child Left Behind.

Health care's not about insurance! Health care's about getting treatment.

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.

There is no horizon in Toledo. There are too many trees.

I had a confused early hippie phase, which was like a cafeteria tray of sloppy, semi-Marxist thoughts, absorbed second-hand.

I myself am a parent in a small business. Number of employees: one.

Adam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.

There is that kind of happiness. There is the love and marriage and family kind of happiness, which is exceedingly boring to describe but nonetheless is important to have and dreadful not to have.

In the wake of Animal House, the stock briefly and quite wrongly shot up. So I love that movie.

I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam "She has a wonderful personality" really means something. But I couldnt figure out a polite way to ask.

I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.

People love to be told what they know already. It's not so much that what they say is wrong, though Ann Coulter does seem to be completely crazy.

Commies love concrete.

One of the few benefits of being a journalist is that you're not in the Army.

We journalists don't have to step on roaches. All we have to do is turn on the kitchen light and watch the critters scutter.

When I was fifteen, I dreamed of living in the big city, as many a young person does if he is artistic and sensitive. By 'artistic and sensitive' I mean short, skinny, unkissed, bad at sports, and carrying a C average in high school.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

The subculture of felons is in great vogue among adolescents. Enron, WorldCom, Tyco, and so forth allow us Republicans to say to America's young people, 'We be thugs.' The GOP may capture the youth vote at last.