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A Very Quiet And Tasteful Way To Be Famous Is To Have A Famous Relative. Then You Can Not Only Be Nothing, You Can Do Nothing Too.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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A Very Quiet And

P. J. O'Rourke

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A Very Quiet And Tasteful Way To Be Famous Is To Have A Famous Relative. Then You Can Not Only Be Nothing, You Can Do Nothing Too.

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There Aren't Many Political Humorists. Dave Barry Is Excellent, But He Doesn't Do It Much.

The Wise Traveler [to Beirut] Will Pack Shirts Or Blouses With Ample Breast Pockets. Reaching Inside A Jacket For Your Passport Looks Too Much Like Going For The Draw And Puts Armed Men Out Of Countinence

The Real Truth About Children Is They Don't Speak The Language Very Well. They're Physically Uncoordinated. And They Are Ignorant Of Our Elaborate Ideas About Right And Wrong.

If We Want The Whole World To Be Rich, We Need To Start Loving Wealth. In The Difference Between Poverty And Plenty, The Problem Is The Pverty, Not The Difference. Wealth Is Good.

I Arrived In The Middle Of A Press Conference - As Boring A Thing To Sit Through If You Don't Know The Language As It Is If You Do.

Politicians Are Always Interested In People. Not That This Is Always A Virtue. Fleas Are Interested In Dogs.

This Country Was Founded By Religious Nuts With Guns.

When You Think Of The Good Old Days, Think One Word: Dentistry.

West Germans Are Tall, Pink, Pert And Orthodontically Corrected, With Hands, Teeth And Hair As Clean As Their Clothes And Clothes As Sharp As Their Looks. Except For The Fact That They All Speak English Pretty Well, They're Indistinguishable From Americans.

I've Decided That My Motto In Life Is "get Off My Lawn." It's The Right Answer To Everything.

Because Of Their Cuisine, Germans Don't Consider Farting Rude. They'd Certainly Be Out Of Luck If They Did.

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.

Guns Are Always The Best Method For A Private Suicide. They Are More Stylish Looking Than Single-edged Razor Blades And Natural Gas Has Got So Expensive. Drugs Are Too Chancy. You Might Miscalculate The Dosage And Just Have A Good Time.

Tabasco Sauce Is To Bachelor Cooking What Forgiveness Is To Sin.

Social Security Is A Government Program With A Constituency Made Up Of The Old, The Near Old And Those Who Hope Or Fear To Grow Old. After 215 Years Of Trying, We Have Finally Discovered A Special Interest That Includes 100 Percent Of The Population. Now We Can Vote Ourselves Rich.

Your Money Does Not Cause My Poverty. Refusal To Believe This Is At The Bottom Of Most Bad Economic Thinking.

I Have, Of All The Inglorious Things, A Malignant Hemorrhoid. What Color Bracelet Does One Wear For That? And Where Does One Wear It? And What Slogan Is Apropos? Perhaps That Slogan Can Be Sewn In Needlepoint Around The Ruffle On A Cover For My Embarrassing Little Doughnut Buttocks Pillow.

When I Left The Lampoon, I Went West To Try That Out, And Discovered That I Hated It.they Were Awful People Turning Out Awful Product .

It Doesn't Matter How Many Televisions And Computers And Pieces Of Stereo Equipment The Chinese Send To Us, Even If They're Sending Them To Us Only In Return For Some Funny, Little, Green Pieces Of Paper. That Is A Balanced Trade. They Got What They Wanted: The Green Pieces Of Paper. We Got What We Wanted: The Plush Toys, The Computers, The Stereo Components.

There Is Parody, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Smarter Than You; Satire, When You Make Fun Of People Who Are Richer Than You; And Burlesque, When You Make Fun Of Both While Taking Your Clothes Off.

A Politician Who Commends Himself As 'caring' And 'sensitive' Because He Wants To Expand The Government's Charitable Programs Is Merely Saying That He's Willing To Do Good With Other Peoples' Money.

Humor Is, By Its Nature, More Truthful Than Factual.

The Larger The German Body, The Smaller The German Bathing Suit And The Louder The German Voice Issuing German Demands And German Orders To Everybody Who Doesn't Speak German. For This, And Several Other Reasons, Germany Is Known As 'the Land Where Israelis Learned Their Manners'.

A Careful Reading Of 50 Simple Things Leaves You Wondering Whether You're Going To Die From Environmental Disaster Or Intellectual Annoyance. Failing Either, You Can Worry Yourself To Death.

Cockfighting Has Always Been My Idea Of A Great Sport -- Two Armed Entrées Battling To See Who'll Be Dinner.

I Remember Thinking Cocaine Was Subtle Until I Noticed I'd Been Awake For Three Weeks And Didn't Know Any Of The Naked People Passed Out Around Me.

It Is A Popular Delusion That The Government Wastes Vast Amounts Of Money Through Inefficiency And Sloth. Enormous Effort And Elaborate Planning Are Required To Waste This Much Money.

Let's Reintroduce Corporal Punishment In The Schools - And Use It On The Teachers.

If You Spend Seventy-two Hours In A Place You've Never Been, Talking To People Whose Language You Don't Speak About Social, Political, And Economic Complexities You Don't Understand, And You Come Back As The World's Biggest Know-it-all, You're A Reporter.

Anything That Makes Your Mother Cry Is Fun

It Takes A Lot Of Weapons To Do Good Works (as Richard The Lionhearted Could Have Told Us). And This Is Not Just A Somali Problem. We Have Poverty And Deprivation In Our Own Country. Try Standing Unarmed On A Street Corner In Compton Handing Out Twenty-dollar Bills And See How Long You Last.

I Spent Almost 25 Years As A Foreign Correspondent, And The World's Primary Problem Is Poverty.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race

Children From The Age Of Five To Ten Should Watch More Television. Television Depicts Adults As Rotten Sob's Given To Fistfights, Gunplay, And Other Mayhem. Kids Who Believe This About Grownups Aren't Likely To Argue About Bedtime.

Lampoon Was Exactly The Opposite. The Work Was A Lot Of Fun, But The Office Environment Was Hell. You Cannot Put 20 Humorists Together.

A Fruit Is A Vegetable With Looks And Money. Plus, If You Let Fruit Rot, It Turns Into Wine, Something Brussel Sprouts Never Do.

Newsmen Believe That News Is A Tacitly Acknowledged Fourth Branch Of The Federal System. This Is Why Most News About Government Sounds As If It Were Federally Mandated -- Serious, Bulky And Blandly Worthwhile, Like A High-fiber Diet Set In Type.

The Weirder You're Going To Behave, The More Normal You Should Look.

You Don't Despair About Something Like The Middle East, You Just Do The Best You Can.

[michael] Moore Doesn't Really Use His Sense Of Humor That Much.

There Was An Austerely Dignified Award Ceremony. By That I Mean We Had To Buy Our Own Drinks - In Clear Violation Of The International Journalists'code Of Truth, Fairness And An Open Bar.

The Tenth Commandment Sends A Message To Socialists, To Egalitarians, To People Obsessed With Fairness, To American Presidential Candidates In The Year 2000 - To Everyone Who Believes That Wealth Should Be Redistributed. And That Message Is Clear And Concise: Go To Hell.

Satire Doesn't Effect Change.

We're Gonna Be In A World Of Hurt If We Don't Get It Fixed, Because There's Going To Be Billions Of People Out There - They're Hungry, They're Mad. One Thing That They Can Get Their Hands On Is Guns.

Nothing About Economic Growth In The United States Over The Course Of The Past 40, 50 Years, During Which Time This Has Been Continually Happening, Would Indicate That We Are Being Harmed In An Overall Sense By This.

One Of The Reporters Must Have Flunked Journalism School Because He Asked A Question That Went Straight To The Point.

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.

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

Personally, I Believe A Rocking Hammock, A Good Cigar, And A Tall Gin-and-tonic Is The Way To Save The Planet.

Russian Cars Are Silly. They Look Like Imports Drawn By A Cartoonist For A Uaw Newsletter.

Seriousness Is Stupidity Sent To College.

The Collegiate Idealists Who Fill The Ranks Of The Environmental Movement Seem Willing To Do Absolutely Anything To Save The Biosphere, Except Take Science Courses And Learn Something About It.

Italy Is Not Technically Part Of The Third World, But No One Has Told The Italians.

A Good Bachelor Drinks His Dessert (and Sometimes The Rest Of His Meals). A Sweet Tooth Is A Danger Signal That You're Getting Too Much Exercise And Not Enough Cocktails.

I Didn't See Any Nra Officials Killing Babies In Waco.

Ever Read Any [friedrich] Hayek? He's Great. The Road To Serfdom Is Like... I'm Not A Big Political-science Reader, But I Actually Dog-eared My Copy. I Ended Up Going Back Through It And Writing A Précis, I Was So Impressed By This Book. It's All About What Happens When Government Tries To Make Everything Right.

There Is Only One Basic Human Right: The Right To Do As You Please, Without Causing Others Harm. With It Comes Our Only Basic Human Duty: The Duty To Accept The Consequences Of Our Actions.

We Should Never Hesitate To Listen To A Fool About Life Because Life Is Pretty Foolish As Far As I Can Tell.

Cars Would Be Safer On Rails!

The Greenpeace Booth At All The Rock And Roll Shows Nowadays Are Akin To The Old Sorcerers Who Used To Stand In The Middle Of Villages Warning Of Danger, 'when Night Wolf Swallows Mother Moon, There Will Be Great Famine.'

I'm A Political Conservative.

From National Lampoon, You Go Directly To Saturday Night Live, Because It's A Lot Of The Same People.

Intelligence Collection Has Been Given An Additional Bureaucracy To Correct The Problems Created By Too Much Bureaucracy In Intelligence Collection.

People Are All Exactly Alike. There's No Such Thing As A Race And Barely Such A Thing As An Ethnic Group. If We Were Dogs, We'd Be The Same Breed. George Bush And An Australian Aborigine Have Fewer Differences Than A Lhasa Apso And A Toy Fox Terrier. A Japanese Raised In Riyadh Would Be An Arab. A Zulu Raised In New Rochelle Would Be An Orthodontist. People Are All The Same, Though Their Circumstances Differ Terribly.

Remember, Your Body Needs 6 To 8 Glasses Of Fluid Daily. Straight Up Or On The Rocks.

What Would Annoy The Most People Most Often? That Is The True Left-wing Test Of Government Intervention.

Bureaucrats Want Bigger Bureaus. Special Interests Are Interested In Whatever's Special To Them. These Two Groups Bring Great Pressure To Bear Upon Politicians Who Have Another Agenda Yet: To Cater To The Temporary Whims And Fads Of The Public And The Press.

A Woman Should Dress To Attract Attention. To Attract The Most Attention, A Woman Should Be Either Nude, Or Wearing Something As Expensive As Getting Her Nude Is Going To Be.

The Neo-hippie-dips, The Sentimentality-crazed Iguana Anthropomorphizers, The Chicken Littles, The Three-bong-hit William Blakes- Thank God These People Don't Actually Go Outdoors Much, Or The Environment Would Be Even Worse Than It Is Already.

The Preamble To The Constitution States: "we, The People Of The United States, In Order To Form A More Perfect Union, Establish Justice, Insure Domestic Tranquillity, Provide For The Common Defence, Promote The General Welfare..." It Doesn't Say "guarantee The General Welfare." And It Certainly Doesn't Say "give Welfare Benefits To All The People In The Country Who Aren't Doing So Well Even If The Reason They Aren't Doing So Well Is Because They're Sitting On Their Butts In Front Of The Tv".

Michael O'donoghue Was A Very Close Friend Of Mine - Very Encouraging With My Stuff, And Really A Great Guy - But He Was A No-kidding Difficult Person.

Mike Had Called Me And Said He Could Offer Me Less, And I Said, "you're On!" Because I Was Really Excited With What Mike Kelly Was Doing, And Now What Cullen Murphy Is Doing With Atlantic. It's A Really Cool Magazine.

Every Pleasure You Forgoe On Earth Is A Pleasure You Won't Get In Heaven.

Then There Was Lsd, Which Was Supposed To Make You Think You Could Fly. I Remember It Made You Think You Couldn't Stand Up, And Mostly It Was Right.

Never Steal Anything So Small That You'll Have To Go To An Unpleasant City Jail For It Instead Of A Minimum-security Federal Tennis Prison.

Oh, God. The Sixties Are Coming Back. Well I've Got A 12-gauge Double-barreled Duck Gun Chambered For Three-inch Magnum Shells. And - Speaking Strictly For This Retired Hippie And Former Pinko Beatnik - If The Sixties Head My Way, They Won't Get Past The Porch Steps. They Will Be History. Which, For Chrissakes, Is What They're Supposed To Be.

Actually, There Is No Way Of Making Vomiting Courteous. You Have To Do The Next Best Thing, Which Is To Vomit In Such A Way That The Story You Tell About It Later Will Be Amusing.

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.

And Worrying Is Less Work Than Doing Something To Fix The Worry. This Is Especially True If We're Careful To Pick The Biggest Possible Problems To Worry About. Everybody Wants To Save The Earth; Nobody Want To Help Mom Do The Dishes.

Who, Other Than A Crazy Person, Does Anything Besides Hang Up On A Robo-call? Any Call, Any Person, Anywhere, Under Any Circumstances.

Long Conversations With Pals When Neither You Nor They Have Had A Drink Can Be A Test Of Palship.

The Soviet Constitution Guarantees Everyone A Job. A Pretty Scary Idea, I'd Say.

Golf Combines Two Favorite American Pastimes: Taking Long Walks And Hitting Things With A Stick.

Fretting About Overpopulation, Is A Perfect Guilt-free - Indeed, Sanctimonious - Way For "progressives" To Be Racists.

Politics Doesn't Work. Look At The Parts Of America Where Government Has Had The Most Power, Where Government Has Spent The Most Money. Look At The Housing Projects We've Got The Poor People In.

You Know, If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal. ... Government Contains Impure Ingredients - As Anybody Who's Looked At Congress Can Tell You. ... Government Practices Deceptive Advertising. And The Merest Glance At The Federal Budget Is Enough To Convict The Government Of Perjury, Extortion, And Fraud. ... In A Nutshell: Government Should Be Against The Law. Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

The Purpose Of The Senate Is To Keep 100 Middle Aged Knuckleheads Out Of The Private Sector Where They Can Do Real Harm.

Globalization Is Simply Opening The Free Marketplace To Encompass The Entire World.

Imagine If All Of Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza. Every Pair Of Pants, Even Those In A Brooks Brothers Suit, Would Be Stone-washed Denim. Celebrity Diet And Exercise Books Would Be The Only Thing On The Shelves At The Library. And - Since Women Are A Majority Of The Population - We'd All Be Married To Mel Gibson.

The Harvard Lampoon Itself, Which Had A Pretty Stellar Run In The '60s.

I'll Pick "i'm Kidding" Anytime Over "i'm Lying."

Christmas Begins About The First Of December With An Office Party And Ends When You Finally Realize What You Spent, Around April Fifteenth Of The Next Year.

When I Became A Man, I Put Away Childish Things And Got More Elaborate And Expensive Childish Things From France And Japan.

Humor Is A Terrific Tool For Explaining Things, Especially When What You're Explaining Is Frightening Or Dull And Complicated.

I Believe That Western Civilization, After Some Disgusting Glitches, Has Become Almost Civilized. I Believe It Is Our First Duty To Protect That Civilization. I Believe It Is Our Second Duty To Improve It. I Believe It Is Our Third Duty To Extend It If We Can.

I Try To Only Ridicule People Who's Efforts Are Sincere. Very Little Trouble Has Been Caused In The World By Insincere Efforts. An Occasional Seduction Maybe. There Were Very Few Insincere Stalinists Or Nazis.

Now Majority Rule Is A Precious, Sacred Thing Worth Dying For. But Like Other Precious, Sacred Things .... It's Not Only Worth Dying For; It Can Make You Wish You Were Dead. Imagine If All Life Were Determined By Majority Rule. Every Meal Would Be A Pizza.

A Humorist Doesn't Really Do That Much Note-taking.

That Happy Sense Of Purpose People Have When Standing Up For A Principle They Haven't Really Been Knocked Down For Yet.

Mike Kelly [from The Atlantic] Called Me Up And Said He Could Pay Me Less Money.

I Bought My First House Because Of Animal House.

Abstract Anger Is Great For Rhetorical Carrying On. You Can Go On Endlessly About The Post Office, But It Doesn't Mean You're Mad At Your Mailman.

One Of The Enduring Problems With Certain Societies In The World - And This Is Certainly True Of A Lot Of Places In The Middle East - Is That The Capacity For Self-governance And Self-organizing Just Isn't There. It Has To Do With History.

Men Generally Pay For All Expenses On A Date ... Either Sex, However, May Bring A Little Gift, Its Value To Be Determined By The Bizarrness Of The Sexual Request To Be Made Later That Evening.

Any Person Who Has Spent Time Outdoors Actually Doing Something, Such As Hunting And Fishing As Opposed To Standing There With A Doobie In His Mouth, Knows Nature Is Not Intrinsically Healthy.

There's A Lot Of Debate On This Subject - About What Kind Of Car Handles Best. Some Say A A Front-engined Car, Some Say A Rear-engined Car. I Say A Rented Car. Nothing Handles Better Than A Rented Car. You Can Go Faster, Turn Corners Sharper, And Put The Transmission Into Reverse While Going Forward At A Higher Rate Of Speed In A Rented Car Than In Any Other Kind.

It Is A Law Of Governance That Democracies Have To Spend Themselves Dizzy. Citizens Of Democracies Can, After All, Tell Their Government To Give Them Things.

Democracies Have

The Idea Of Capitalism Is Not Just Success But Also The Failure That Allows Success To Happen.

There Are Twenty-seven Specific Complaints Against The British Crown Set Forth In The Declaration Of Independence. To Modern Ears They Still Sound Reasonable. They Still Sound Reasonable, In Large Part, Because So Many Of Them Can Be Leveled Against The Federal Government Of The United States.

Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

Health Care Is Too Expensive, So The Clinton Administration Is Putting A High-powered Coporate Lawyer - Hillary - In Charge Of Making It Cheaper. (this Is What I Always Do When I Want To Spend Less Money - Hire A Lawyer From Yale.) If You Think Health Care Is Expensive Now, Wait Until You See What It Costs When It's Free.

Never Fight An Inanimate Object.

The American Political System Is Like Fast Food - Mushy, Insipid, Made Out Of Disgusting Parts Of Things And Everybody Wants Some.

Like Rick In Casablanca: "we'll Always Have Paris." When What We'll Always Have Is, Like, Brooklyn And Arguments About [lev] Trotsky.

The Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By The Redistribution Of Wealth. Poverty Can't Be Eliminated By Punishing People Who've Escaped Poverty, Taking Their Money And Giving It As A Reward To People Who Have Failed To Escape.

In The Past A Man Was Expected To Give His Seat On A Bus To A Woman. Today It Would Be Much More Courteous For That Man To Give Her His Job.

Bachelors Know All About Parties. In Fact, A Good Bachelor Is A Living, Breathing Party All By Himself. At Least That Is What My Girlfriend Said When She Found The Gin Bottles Under The Couch. I Believe Her Exact Words Were, "you're A Disgusting, Drunken Mess." And That's A Good Description Of A Party, If It's Done Right.

Harvard Has Been Almost As Important To The American Jewish Community As The Pork-sausage Industry.

Stay Away From Girls Who Cry A Lot Or Who Look Like They Get Pregnant Easily Or Have Careers.

The Question Nowadays Is Not What Makes Government Work. The Question Is How Do We Make It Stop.

Government Work

Never Serve Oysters In A Month That Has No Paycheck In It.

Everything On A Boat Has A Different Name Than It Would Have If It Weren't On A Boat. Either This Is Ancient Seafaring Tradition Or It's How People Who Mess Around With Boats Try To Impress The Rest Of Us Who Actually Finished College.

Feminism Is The Result Of A Few Ignorant And Literal-minded Women Letting The Cat Out Of The Bag About Which Is The Superior Sex. Once Women Made It Public That They Could Do Things Better Than Men, They Were, Of Course, Forced To Do Them.

The Main Reason To Be Opposed To Political Control Of Smoking Is To Keep Power -even The Smallest And Silliest Kind Of Power - Out Of The Hands Of ... Members Of A Dangerous Class -the Class That Knows What's Good For Us Better Than We Do.

To Mistrust Science And Deny The Validity Of The Scientific Method Is To Resign Your Job As A Human. You'd Better Go Look For Work As A Plant Or Wild Animal.

The Real Slums Are Another Matter. The Bad Parts Of Tondo Are As Bad As Any Place I've Seen, Ancient, Filthy Houses Swarmed With The Poor And Stinking Of Sewage And Trash. But There Are Worse Parts - Squatter Areas Where People Live Under Cardboard, In Shipping Crates, Behind Tacked-up Newspapers. Dad Would March You Straight To The Basement With A Hairbrush In His Hand If He Caught You Keeping Your Hamster Cage Like This.

When Politics Are Used To Allocate Resources, The Resources All End Up Being Allocated To Politics.

The Problem Isn't A Congress That Won't Cut Spending Or A President Who Won't Raise Taxes. The Problem Is An American Public With A Bottomless Sense Of Entitlement To Federal Money.

Not Being A Liberal, I Have Very Little Grasp Of Things That I Know Nothing About.

I Had Really Not Been Out Of The United States Much, Except For Mexico. I Thought, "jesus Christ, This [russia] Is Like A Whole New World." Instead Of Writing Michael Jackson One-glove Jokes, All I Had To Do Was Go To These Weird Places And Keep My Eyes And Ears Open.

I've Always Figured That If God Wanted Us To Go To Church A Lot He'd Have Given Us Bigger Behinds To Sit On And Smaller Heads To Think With.

People Are Always Angry At America. They're Absolutely Certain That America Either Caused Their Problems Or Is Deliberately Not Fixing Their Problems. But The Anger Is Always Directed At America And Never At Americans.

Then There Was Communism's Weak-tea Sister, Socialism. Socialists Maintained That We Shouldn't Take All The Money Away From All The People Since All The People Don't Have Money. We Should Take All The Money Away From Only The People Who Make Money. Then, When We Run Out Of That, We Could Take More Money From The People Who...hey, Wait! Where'd You People Go? What Do You Mean You're "tax Exiles In Monaco?"

The Average Iq In America Is—and This Can Be Proven Mathematically—average.

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.

Division Of Labor

You Read [bill ] Maher's Book, And He Didn't Take Econ 101. All His Arguments About Gasoline, It's Not That They're Right Or Wrong - They're Just Not Informed.

The Number Of American Presidential Candidates Varies With The Sunspot Cycle And The Phases Of The Moon. Being A Republican, I'm Backing Hillary Clinton. Because She Could Lose. The Reason Is Not That She's A Woman. The Reason Is That She's The Particular Woman Who Taught The 4th Grade Class That Every Man In America Wished He Were Dead In. Hillary Clinton Is Lucy Holding The Football For Charlie Brown. Hillary Clinton Is "america's Ex-wife."

Automobiles Are Free Of Egotism, Passion, Prejudice And Stupid Ideas About Where To Have Dinner. They Are, Literally, Selfless. A World Designed For Automobiles Instead Of People Would Have Wider Streets, Larger Dining Rooms, Fewer Stairs To Climb And No Smelly, Dangerous Subway Stations.

Fashionably Amusing Table Manners Are A Matter Of Breaking The Right Rule At The Right Time.

We Had A Choice Between Democrats Who Couldn't Learn From The Past And Republicans Who Couldn't Stop Living In It.

It Remains To Be Seen Which Program Will Cause Greater Societal Damage: China's One-child Policy Or America's One-parent Policy.

You Start Out With Mad Magazine, And You Go Right Through The Sort Of Black Humor Of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort Sahl, Paul Krassner... If You Put Lenny Together With Mad Magazine And Run It Through The Brain Of A College Student, You Get National Lampoon.

Then There's Politics. Just Imagine Politics With Its Dumbbell Element Subtracted. There Would Be No Republican Candidates. There Would Be No Democratic Voters. The Whole System Would Collapse.

Those Who Do Not Know History Are Probably Also Not Doing Well In English Or Math. P.j. O'rourke

Rich Parents Are Famous Both For Miserliness And Astonishing Longevity. And, When They Finally Do Die, You'll Find They've Left Their Estate In Inviolate Trust To The Golden Retrievers.

Golden Retrievers

Maybe A Vague President And An Incompetent And Somewhat Corrupt Administration Is What The Nation Needs.

There Is A Remarkable Breakdown Of Taste And Intelligence At Christmastime. Mature, Responsible Grown Men Wear Neckties Made Of Holly Leaves And Drink Alcoholic Beverages With Raw Egg Yolks And Cottage Cheese In Them.

It's Better To Spend Money Like There's No Tomorrow Than To Spend Tonight Like There's No Money.

Ireland And The Irish

If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal.

I Realised The Bohemian Life Was Not For Me. I Would Look Around At My Friends, Living Like Starving Artists, And Wonder, 'where's The Art?' They Weren't Doing Anything. And There Was So Much Interesting Stuff To Do, So Much Fun To Be Had... Maybe I Could Even Quit Renting.

The Government Is Huge, Stupid, Greedy And Makes Nosy, Officious And Dangerous Intrusions Into The Smallest Corners Of Life - This Much We Can Stand. But The Real Problem Is That Government Is Boring. We Could Cure Or Mitigate The Other Ills Washington Visits On Us If We Could Only Bring Ourselves To Pay Attention To Washington Itself. But We Cannot.

[ I'm] Humorist, I Guess. Or Really More Of A Reporter. A Reporter Who Reports On Funny Things.

Anyhow, All Mankind's Ideas And Interests, All Human Aims And Motives, Are Exhibited, Fully Formed, In A Three-year-old Child. The Kid Is Just Operating On A Smaller Scale And Lacks The Advantage Of Having Made Enormous Soft-money Campaign Contributions To Political Candidates.

Good Manners Consist Of Doing Precisely What Everyone Thinks Should Be Done, Especially When No One Knows Quite What That Is.

Whenever People Tell You They Are Going To Wipe The Slate Clean, It's Your Slate They Mean To Wipe.

The Complexity Of Economics Can Be Calculated Mathematically. Write Out The Algebraic Equation That Is The Human Heart And Multiply Each Unknown By The Population Of The World.

The Mystery Of Government Is Not How Washington Works But How To Make It Stop.

You Can Learn All About The Human Condition From Covering The Crime Beat In A Big City - You Don't Need To Go To Beirut For That - But A Foreign Correspondent Begins To Understand Poverty From A Different Perspective.

As Long As We Are On Firm Moral Ground, As Long As We're Caring About Other People, These Are Legitimate Worries. The Minute That We Start Protecting Our Own Interests In The Name Of These Worries And Saying, "oh, We Have To Make Sure That Only Ford Motor Company Manufactures Cars, Because We Can't Be Sure That The Cars In Other Countries Are Being Made Quite Up To Our Point Of View," We're Economically Off Base, And, Of Course, We're Moral Hypocrites, Too.

Armenians And Azerbaijanis In Stepanakert, Capital Of The Nagorno-karabakh Autonomous Region, Rioted Over Much Needed Spelling Reform In The Soviet Union.

Just As Some Things Are Too Strange For Fiction, Others Are Too True For Journalism.

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.

We Have No One To Blame For The Kennedys But Ourselves. We Took The Kennedys To Heart Of Our Own Accord. And It Is My Opinion That We Did It Not Because We Respected Them Or Thought What They Proposed Was Good, But Because They Were Pretty. We, The Electorate, Were Smitten By This Handsome, Vivacious Family. . . . We Wanted To Hug Their Golden Tousled Heads To Our Dumpy Breasts.

Human Problems Are Complex. If Something Isn't Complex It Doesn't Qualify As Problematic. Very Simple Bad Things Are Not Worth Troubling Ourselves About.

All Change Is Bad. But Sometimes It Has To Be Done.

The Arab Peoples Possess An Ancient And Highly Developed Civilization That Is In Many Ways More Sophisticated Than Our Own. For Instance, They Invented Algebra. And This Is Why We Have To Go To War With Saddam Hussein This Minute And Bomb The Shish Kebab Out Of Him Before He Invents Trig And Chemistry And The Whole Of America Flunks High School.

If You Are Young And You Drink A Great Deal It Will Spoil Your Health, Slow Your Mind, Make You Fat - In Other Words, Turn You Into An Adult.

As I Get Older, All Sorts Of Things Become Less Funny. Once One Has Children, Any Cruelty Involving Children Becomes Far Less Amusing Than When One Was At The Mercy Of One's Friends' And Relatives' Children.

One Of The Things That Makes Me A Conservative, Or A Libertarian, Or Whatever The Heck It Is That I Am - A Person Who Doesn't Much Like Big Government - Is That I Do Not Like The Concentration Of The Power.

Politics Are For Foreigners With Their Endless Wrongs And Paltry Rights. Politics Are A Lousy Way To Get Things Done. Politics Are, Like God's Infinite Mercy, A Last Resort.

If Libertarianism Were Easy To Explain, And It Weren't Easy To Exaggerate The Effects Of Libertarianism, I Think It Would Have Been Done Already. Many Many Very Intelligent People Have Applied Themselves To Crafting An Agenda That People Could Grab Ahold Of. But The Problem Of Course Is That Libertarianism Isn't Political. It Is Kind Of Anti-political. It Wants To Take A Lot Of Things Out Of The Political Arena.

Some People Are Better Imagined In One's Bed Than Found There In The Morning.

If I Give Up Drinking, Smoking, And Fatty Foods, I Can Add Ten Years To My Life. Trouble Is, I'll Add It To The Wrong End.

Wealth Is, For Most People, The Only Honest And Likely Path To Liberty. With Money Comes Power Over The World. Men Are Freed From Drudgery, Women From Exploitation. Businesses Can Be Started, Homes Built, Communities Formed, Religions Practiced, Educations Pursued. But Liberals Aren't Very Interested In Such Real And Material Freedoms. They Have A More Innocent - Not To Say Toddlerlike - Idea Of Freedom. Liberals Want The Freedom To Put Anything Into Their Mouths, To Say Bad Words And To Expose Their Private Parts In Art Museums.

You Can't Get Something For Nothing. Everybody Remembers This Except Politicians.

I Covered The Lebanese Civil War. I Could See A Place That Had Once Been Prosperous And Now Was Impoverished. I'm Not Seeing That In America.

No Government Proposal More Complicated Than "this Note Is Legal Tender For All Debts, Public And Private" Ever Works.

African Famine Is Not A Visitation Of Fate. It Is Largely Man-made, And The Men Who Made It Are Largely Africans.

For Toddlers I Suggest Leaving Their Mittens On Year-round, Indoors And Out. That Way They Can't Get Into Aspirin Bottles, Liquor Cabinets, Or Boxes Of Kitchen Matches.

Vegetables Are Something God Invented To Let Women Get Even With Their Children.

Maybe A Nation That Consumes As Much Booze And Dope As We Do And Has Our Kind Of Divorce Statistics Should Pipe Down About "character Issues."

The Dominant Type Of Humor In The '60s Was Essentially Defensive And Self-deprecating, Using Humor As A Shield.

What Use Is It To Endure The Dutch Rubs And Indian Rope Burns That Are Politics If You Can't Obtain Mastery Over People And Give Them Noogies Back?

These Were People Who Believed Everything About The Soviet Union Was Perfect, But They Were Bringing Their Own Toilet Paper.

I Buy A Tractor Two Years Ago, And Four-fifths Of The Tractor Manual Is About Not Tipping Over, Not Raising The Bucket High Enough To Hit High-tension Wire... Not Killing Yourself, Basically. And In That Manual, I Found Out - And It Cost Me A Thousand Dollars - That When The Tractor Is New, 10 Hours Into Use Of The Tractor, You Have To Re-torque The Lug Nuts. If You Don't, You Will Oval The Holes. This Is Buried Between The Moron Warnings. I Never Found It. I Take The Tractor In For Its Regular Servicing, And They Say My Wheels Are Gone. How Am I Supposed To Know That? "it's In The Manual."

Taxi Drivers All Over The World, By The Way, Are Under Newspaper Guild Contract To Give Easy Quotes To Foreign Correspondents.

Some People Are Worried About The Difference Between Right And Wrong. I'm Worried About The Difference Between Wrong And Fun.

There Is One Thing Women Can Never Take Away From Men. We Die Sooner.

Politics Should Be Limited In Scope To Ware, Protection Of Property, And The Occasional Precautionary Beheading Of A Member Of The Ruling Class.

Happy Hour Is Slightly Different In The Soviet Union. There Are No Ice Cubes Or Orange-peel Twists In The Vodka. Also, It Lasts All Day.

I Am A Journalist And, Under The Modern Journalist's Code Of Olympian Objectivity (and Total Purity Of Motive), I Am Absolved Of Responsibility. We Journalists Don't Have To Step On Roaches. All We Have To Do Is Turn On The Kitchen Light And Watch The Critters Scurry.

Political Stuff Is All About His [hunter S. Thompson] Reaction To A Situation. And My Stuff Is Much More Externally Driven.

Good Manners Can Replace Morals. It May Be Years Before Anyone Knows If What You Are Doing Is Right. But If What You Are Doing Is Nice, It Will Be Immediately Evident.

With The War In Iraq, I Had The Cooperation Of The Department Of Defense. Kuwait Was Pretty Eager To Get American Journalists In There, To Show Us What A Wonderful Place They Are, And What Great Allies They Are To America, Even Though They Didn't Actually Fight In The War.

Every Government Is A Parliament Of Whores. The Trouble Is, In A Democracy, The Whores Are Us.

Democracies Have

The Forces Of Safety Are Afoot In The Land. I, For One, Believe It Is A Conspiracy - A Conspiracy Of Safety Nazis Shouting "sieg Health" And Seeking To Trammel Freedom, Liberty, And Large Noisy Parties. The Safety Nazis Advocate Gun Control, Vigorous Exercise, And Health Foods. The Result Can Only Be A Disarmed, Exhausted, And Half-starved Population Ready To Acquiesce To Dictatorship Of Some Kind.

Whatever The Occasion, Do Not Neglect Alcohol. No Other Refreshment Will Do. Yes, Alcohol Kills Brain Cells, But It's Very Selective. It Only Kills The Brain Cells That Contain Good Sense, Shame, Embarrassment, And Restraint.

I Don't See Evidence Of America Being A Poorer Country Than It Was 20 Years Ago. I've Seen Impoverished Devastation. I've Seen Places Where Things Had Been Good And Now They Were Very Bad.

I Am No Stranger To Loud Music. I've Been To A Mitch Ryder And The Detroit Wheels Concert. I Once Dated A Woman With Two Kids.

People Will Tell You Anything But What They Do Is Always The Truth.

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