Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke

I am a student of stupidity. I am a political reporter.

Just because a subject is serious doesn't mean it doesn't have plenty of absurdities.

Tom DeLay may or may not have broken campaign finance laws, but he did his best to look like he was breaking them.

France in August when you can travel through the entire country without encountering a single pesky Frenchman or being bothered with anything that's open for business.

Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

I'm a registered Republican and consider socialism a violation of the American principle that you shouldn't stick your nose in other people's business except to make a buck.

If you get outside the world of show business and its satellites, there's a whole world of car nuts in the Los Angeles area.

Russian cars are silly. They look like imports drawn by a cartoonist for a UAW newsletter.

Writing is agony. I hate it.

I like to argue with the radio.

I have never been to a museum in Hong Kong, or a movie or a play. I've never gone club-hopping. I've never taken the tram to Victoria Peak.

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with his monuments. Stalin was once a journalistic hack, and I can personally testify to how frustrated they are. Pol Pot left a very edgy photo collection behind. And Osama seems quite interested in video.

To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You'd better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.

Most people sort of enjoy going to work because of the socialisation, a chance to flirt with co-workers and so on, but actually hate the job they do.

All religions must be made child-proof. Our teachers' unions have done good work in this field, K through 12. Delaying first communions and bar mitzvahs until age 21 would be another positive step.

Well the planet I've got a chance to visit is Earth, and Earth's principal features are chaos and war. I think I'd be a fool to spend years here and never have a look.

One thing talk can't accomplish is communication. This is because everybody's talking too much to pay attention to what anyone is saying

I don't even know which end of a computer one is supposed to gaze into. I've never used a computer.

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.

The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.

In midlife, we're as dumb as we get.

The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It's a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.

I read good. I was an English major.

The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.