Quotes from P. J. O'Rourke

Visiting Future World is like opening a Chinese fortune cookie to read, "Soon you'll be finished with dinner."

Australia is not very exclusive. On the visa application they still ask if you've been convicted of a felony - although they are willing to give you a visa even if you haven't been.

The Australian language is easier to learn than boat talk. It has a vocabulary of about six words.

Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, rioted over much needed spelling reform in the Soviet Union.

The dominant type of humor in the '60s was essentially defensive and self-deprecating, using humor as a shield.

Long conversations with pals when neither you nor they have had a drink can be a test of palship.

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.

Because of their cuisine, Germans don't consider farting rude. They'd certainly be out of luck if they did.

Our earliest evidence of government, in the ruins of Babylon and Egypt, shows nothing but ziggurats and pyramids of wasted taxpayer money, the TARP funds and shovel-ready stimulus programs of their day.

You're not a baby boomer if you don't have a visceral recollection of a Kennedy and a King assassination, a Beatles breakup, a U.S. defeat in Vietnam, and a Watergate.

Jeans fit the mature male one of two ways, both dirigible in nature. You make a public impression that's either Hindenburg or Goodyear blimp.

I'm on Medicare now. If I go and have a big operation, it costs me nothing. It should cost me a little. I'm not rich, but I can afford a few grand if I have to have my appendix taken out. I can pitch in a little bit.

The most futuristic aspect of the House of the Future was that it was made almost entirely of plastic.

I like fiction and the kind of history that gives the grace and flavor of fiction to the past. No bloviation on current events, please. I can write that junk myself.

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.

The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in melodramatic plots.

The poor are an especially important resource for innovation when they have the bravery and pluck to get out of the poor places in which they're living.

My generation of Americans was the first to really care about racism and sexism, not to mention the I Ching, plus, of course, the Earth.

The laws of the marketplace are physical laws, and they don't become suspended in a crisis any more than the law of gravity does.

The most brilliant satire of all time was 'A Modest Proposal' by Jonathan Swift. You'll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.

If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked.

I think it's always easy to be sympathetic to parts of the government in detail; in their concrete manifestations. Because obviously, we don't have government for no reason.

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.