Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke

Network television has been attempting to lure viewers for years with its low-interest programming only to have those viewers discover later that their brains are bankrupt.

All religious believers should be licensed to make sure that they are competent to hold opinions and viewpoints and that they don't believe in just any old thing, such as creationism or a flat tax.

In Toledo, people grow out. Out to the suburbs. Out to the parts of America where the economy is more vigorous. And all too often, out to 48-inch waistbands.

I think every high school student who was alert during the early '60s got very embittered by the slow progress and the violence surrounding the Civil Rights Movement.

I'm really tired of virtue.

The only advantage to being a middle-aged man is that when you put on a jacket and tie, you're the Scary Dad. Never mind that no one has had an actually scary dad since 1966. The visceral fear remains.

What is obnoxious about the motives of politicians - whatever those motives may be - is that politicians must announce their motives as visionary and grand.

Liberals consider people to be nuisances.

We did not become libertarians because we are altruists.

I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a 'learning experience.' Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a 'learning experience.' It makes me feel less stupid.

Cars let us out of the barn and, while they were at it, destroyed the American nuclear family. As anyone who has had an American nuclear family can tell you, this was a relief to all concerned.

The killjoys initiated automobile crash standards so rigorous that we can't buy a car that hasn't been dropped from the top of a phone pole with our whole family strapped inside.

Zen martini: A martini with no vermouth at all. And no gin, either.

Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin.

Politicians are always interested in people. Not that this is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.

I don't think I'll ever be a real boat reporter. My Rolex isn't big enough.

Only one way to cover a story like this, and make that a double, bartender, please.

Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.

Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.

If I bring anything to the table, it's the fact that not everybody realizes they're funny. So I just point a finger.

East Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn't compulsory.

Germans respond well to lies. At least, they always have historically.

The typical old-fashioned diet (in the nineteenth century) was so bad it almost assembled modern dieting.

I can think of a number of areas in New York where three acres of nuclear waste would make the neighborhood safer to walk around in than it is now, and better lit.