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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.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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Ever Read Any [friedrich]

P. J. O'Rourke

...

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.

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More From P. J. O'Rourke

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

One Of The Annoying Things About Believing In Free Will And Individual Responsibility Is The Difficulty Of Finding Somebody To Blame Your Problems On. And When You Do Find Somebody, It's Remarkable How Often His Picture Turns Up On Your Driver's License.

Civilization Is An Enormous Improvement On The Lack Thereof.

There Are Artists With Palettes And Easels Selling The Kind Of Modern Art That Soviet Art Critics Used To Critique With Bulldozers. Judging By The Paintings I Saw, The Soviets Were Right The First Time.

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.

Thanksgiving Is So Called Because We Are All So Thankful That It Only Comes Once A Year.

Only One Way To Cover A Story Like This, And Make That A Double, Bartender, Please.

Always Read Something That Will Make You Look Good If You Die In The Middle Of It.

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.

So What If I Don't Agree With The Democrats? What's To Disagree With? They Believe Everything. And What They Don't Believe, The Republicans Do. Neither Of Them Stands For Anything They Believe In, Anyway.

[wave Of Bestselling Conservative Commentators] It's Kind Of Like Reading The Power Of Positive Thinking, Or Any Other Advice Or How-to Book. All They Do Is Reassure People Of Their Basic Opinions, And Then They Can Continue To Act Like They've Always Acted. I'd Say It's Time To Move On To Something Else, But I Don't Know What It Would Be.

As A Libertarian I Believe We Should Have A Federal Government Simple And Circumscribed Enough To Be Run By An Average, Dull, Normal American. With George W. Bush We Have Half The Equation In Place.

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

The Political Process Consists Entirely Of Politicians Talking Out Of Their Butts.

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

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

There Was Also A Hunger Strike In Front Of The National Press Club, Which Seemed An Odd Place To Have A Hunger Strike (a Cocktail Fast, Maybe). Although The Bangladeshis Were Savvy Enough To Know To Know That If You're Going To Pester Journalists, Don't Go To Where They Work: You'll Never Find Them There.

Government Isn't A Good Way To Solve Problems ... [g]overnment Is Concerned Mostly With Self-perpetuation And Is Subject To Fantastic Ideas About Its Own Capabilities. ... [g]overnment Is Wasteful Of The Nation's Resources, Immune To Common Sense And Subject To Pressure From Every Half-organized Bouquet Of Assholes. ... [g]overnment Is Distrustful Of And Disrespectful Toward Average Americans While Being Easily Gulled By Americans With Money, Influence Or Fame.

Our Democracy, Our Culture, Our Whole Way Of Life Is A Spectacular Triumph Of The Blah. Why Not Have A Political Convention Without Politics To Nominate A Leader Who's Out In Front Of Nobody? Maybe Our National Mindlessness Is The Very Thing That Keeps Us From Turning Into One Of Those Smelly European Countries Full Of Pseudo-reds And Crypto-fascists And Greens Who Dress Like Forest Elves.

That Doesn't Mean That You Should Just Sit Back And Just Let Accidents Happen To You. No, You Have To Go Out And Cause Them Yourself. That Way You're In Control Of The Situation.

In The Wake Of Animal House, The Stock Briefly And Quite Wrongly Shot Up. So I Love That Movie.

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.

In Comparative Terms, There's No Poverty In America By A Long Shot. Heritage Foundation Political Scientist Robert Rector Has Worked Up Figures Showing That When The Official U.s. Measure Of Poverty Was Developed In 1963, A Poor American Family Had An Income Twenty-nine Times Greater Than The Average Per Capita Income In The Rest Of The World. An Individual American Could Make More Money Than 93 Percent Of The Other People On The Planet And Still Be Considered Poor.

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.

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

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.

I Like To Do My Principal Research In Bars, Where People Are More Likely To Tell The Truth Or, At Least, Lie Less Convincingly Than They Do In Briefings And Books.

It's Much Better To Have Your Arguments Dismissed Because You Might Be Joking Than To Have Your Arguments Dismissed Because You're Not Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

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.

Political Systems Are Run By Self-selecting Politicians. We Don't Draft People; It's Not Jury Duty.

Crazy Old People Are Our Entire Source Of Polling Information.

The Lampoon Started In 1970, And I Began Writing Freelance For Them Around The End Of 1971, And Then All Through '72. They Hired Me In '73, And I Left Early In '81. I Did Everything From Low Puns To Being Editor-in-chief.

There's Nothing More Oily And Cynical In Politics Than Telling The Truth.

Telling The Truth

Then Basically What Was Happening Was That It Was The Middle '80s, And Rolling Stone Realized That A Lot Of Their Readers Had Voted For [ronald] Reagan, And They Were Going, "gosh! We Need A Republican! Does Anybody Know A Republican? Wait A Minute! I Think P.j.'s A Republican!"

Feeling Good About Government Is Like Looking On The Bright Side Of Any Catastrophe. When You Quit Looking On The Bright Side, The Catastrophe Is Still There.

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.

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

Hubris Is One Of The Great Renewable Resources.

Renewable Resources

Farm Policy, Although It's Complex, Can Be Explained. What It Can't Be Is Believed. No Cheating Spouse, No Teen With A Wrecked Family Car, No Mayor Of Washington, D.c., Videotaped In Flagrante Delicto Has Ever Come Up With Anything As Farfetched As U.s. Farm Policy.

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.

When A Couple Decides To Divorce, They Should Inform Both Sets Of Parents Before Having A Party And Telling All Their Friends. This Is Not Only Courteous But Practical. Parents May Be Very Willing To Pitch In With Comments, Criticism, And Malicious Gossip Of Their Own To Help The Divorce Along.

I'm Here As A Radio Journalist But Am Not Even Sure Which Part Of A Tape Recorder Takes The Pictures.

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

Finally, One Night We Were Smoking Pot [with Michael O'donoghue] And Talking About The People That Are Invariably In High School, Whether You Go To Prep School Or Public School Or Ghetto School Or Rich Suburban School. And Actually, It Spun Off From A Kurt Vonnegut Quote.

If I Bring Anything To The Table, It's The Fact That Not Everybody Realizes They're Funny. So I Just Point A Finger.

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

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.

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.

Cats Are To Dogs What Modern People Are To The People We Used To Have. Cats Are Slimmer, Cleaner, More Attractive, Disloyal, And Lazy. It's Easy To Understand Why The Cat Has Eclipsed The Dog As Modern America's Favorite Poet. People Like Poets To Possess The Same Qualities They Do.

If Disney Still Wants To Make Epcot Center Futuristic, They Could Do So By Blowing The Place Up With An Atom Bomb.

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

I Didn't Realize What Fun It Was [ Been A Reporter].

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.

Wherever There's Injustice, Oppression, And Suffering, America Will Show Up Six Months Late And Bomb The Country Next To Where It's Happening.

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

People Think The Free Market Is A Philosophy, They Think That It Is A Creed. It Is None Of Those Things. Free Market Is A Bathroom Scale, It Is A Measuring Tape, It's Simply A Measurement.

Liberalism Is Just Communism Sold By The Drink.

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 Tenth Commandment Sends A Message To Socialists, To Collectivists, To People Who Believe That Wealth Is Best Obtained By Redistribution, And That Message Is Clear And Concise . . . Egalitarianism Is Sinful; It's Also Cowardly.

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?

I've Never Been Able To Get It Straight About What These People Who Are Worried About The Trade Deficit Are Worried About. When They Say That We're Buying Too Much From Overseas, That We're Sending Too Many Dollars Overseas To Get All These Goods And Services They Got, They're Saying That The American Dollar Is Too Strong And That Is Hurting Our Economy. And The Result Of This Will Be That The American Dollar Will Get Too Weak, And That Will Hurt Our Economy.

Whereas Rolling Stone, I Just Never Had Anything To Do With Them. I'd Stop By The Office Maybe Twice A Year.

[t]he Clinton Administration Launched An Attack On People In Texas Because Those People Were Religious Nuts With Guns. Hell, This Country Was Founded By Religious Nuts With Guns. Who Does Bill Clinton Think Stepped Ashore On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers? Or Maybe The People In Texas Were Attacked Because Of Child Abuse. But, If Child Abuse Was The Issue, Why Didn't Janet Reno Tear-gas Woody Allen?

Visiting Future World Is Like Opening A Chinese Fortune Cookie To Read, "soon You'll Be Finished With Dinner."

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

Satan Probably Wouldn't Have Talked So Big If God Had Been His Wife.

Iran And Iraq Have Been At War For Five Years Now. The Traditional Present For A Fifth Anniversary Is Wood. Here's A Gift Suggestion: A Big Stick To Beat Some Goddamned Sense Into Their Heads.

All Lies Are Told With A Straight Face. It Is Truth That's Said With A Dismissive Giggle.

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

A Firm, Hearty Handshake Gives A Good First Impression, And You'll Never Be Forgiven If You Don't Live Up To It.

First Impression

The Free Market Is Ugly And Stupid, Like Going To The Mall; The Unfree Market Is Just As Ugly And Just As Stupid, Except There Is Nothing In The Mall And If You Don't Go There They Shoot You.

We're Told Cars Are Wasteful. Wasteful Of What? Oil Did A Lot Of Good Sitting In The Ground For Millions Of Years. We're Told Cars Should Be Replaced With Mass Transportation. But It's Hard To Reach The Drive-through Window At Mcdonald's From A Speeding Train. And We're Told Cars Cause Pollution. A Hundred Years Ago City Streets Were Ankle Deep In Horse Excrement. What Kind Of Pollution Do You Want? Would You Rather Die Of Cancer At Eighty Or Typhoid Fever At Nine?

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.

You'll Note That Politicians No Longer Spend Money, They Invest It. Don't Worry About Paying More To The [irs]. You Aren't Being Taxed; You're Taking A Plunge On A Fly-by-night Stock Issue.

I Suspect The Soviets Never Did Want To Use Those Bombs. The Most Stalinist Of Soviet Hard-liners - Stalin, For Example - Must Have Realized A Nuclear War Would Be A Hard Thing To Clean Up After.

In The Third World, Honk Your Horn Only Under The Following Circumstances: 1. When Anything Blocks The Road. 2. When Anything Doesn't. 3. When Anything Might. 4. At Red Lights. 5. At Green Lights. 6. At All Other Times.

The U.s. Tax Code Was Written By A Students. Every April 15 We Have To Pay Somebody Who Got An A In Accounting To Keep Ourselves From Being Sent To Jail.

I'm Old Enough To Remember When The Air Over American Cities Was A Lot Dirtier Than It Is Now. You've Probably Never Woken Up Early On A Winter Morning To The Acid Stink Of Coal Smoke In The Air, Which Was Everywhere When I Was A Little Kid. My Grade School Was Heated With Coal. Not Only Was Coal Used To Generate Electricity, It Was Without Any Scrubbers In The Stacks.

I'm Really Tired Of Virtue.

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.

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 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.

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.

I Have A 10 Year Old At Home, And She Is Always Saying, 'that's Not Fair.' When She Says That, I Say, "honey, You're Cute; That's Not Fair. Your Family Is Pretty Well Off; That's Not Fair. You Were Born In America; That's Not Fair. Honey, You Had Better Pray To God That Things Don't Start Getting Fair For You.

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.

I Write Because I Like To Make Things And The Only Things I Am Good At Making Things With Are Words.

Apparently Bolivia Is The Key Source Of Lithium In The World. So We're Gonna Trade The Saudis For The Bolivians.

The U.s. Constitution Is Less Than A Quarter The Length Of The Owner's Manual For A 1998 Toyota Camry, And Yet It Has Managed To Keep 300 Million Of The World's Most Unruly, Passionate And Energetic People Safe, Prosperous And Free.

Fortunately, I'm Married To Someone Who's A Pretty Excellent Parent!

There Isn't Much Room For An Outsider Point Of View In Print Any More.

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

I'm 61 Years Old. I'm Not That Fearful Of The Future, Period. I'm Not Going To See That Much Of It.

When A Government Controls Both The Economic Power Of Individuals And The Coercive Power Of The State ... This Violates A Fundamental Rule Of Happy Living: Never Let The People With All The Money And The People With All The Guns Be The Same People.

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.

When A Thing Defies Physical Law, There's Usually Politics Involved.

My Grandmother Wouldn't Even Speak The Word Democrat If There Were Children In The Room, She'd Say Bastards Instead.

I Like To Take Things That Are Boring-but-important And Try To Make Them Interesting. That Was Definitely What I Was After With Eat The Rich.

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.

Of Course, The Humans In Haiti Have Hope. They Hope To Leave.

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.

There Are A Number Of Mechanical Devices Which Increase Sexual Arousal, Particularly In Women. Chief Among These Is The Mercedes-benz 380sl Convertible.

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

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".

A Pleasant Natural Environment Is A Good - A Luxury Good, Philosophical Good, A Moral Goody-good, A Good Time For All. Whatever, We Want It. If We Want Something, We Should Pay For It, With Our Labor Or Our Cash. We Shouldn't Beg It, Steal It, Sit Around Wishing For It, Or Euchre The Government Into Taking It By Force.

Seriousness Is Stupidity Sent To College.

Never Strike Anyone So Old, Small Or Weak That Verbal Abuse Would Have Sufficed.

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

This Country Is So Urbanized We Think Low-fat Milk Comes From Cows On Nutri/system Weight-loss Plans.

Lampoon Was A Very Collegial Operation, Though "collegial" Usually Means "friendly" And It Wasn't That Friendly. But We Were Tight, Like A Family.

Never Refuse Wine. It Is An Odd But Universally Held Opinion That Anyone Who Doesn't Drink Must Be An Alcoholic.

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

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

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

America Is Not A Wily, Sneaky Nation. We Don't Think That Way. We Don't Think Much At All, Thank God. Start Thinking And Pretty Soon You Get Ideas, And Then You Get Idealism, And The Next Thing You Know You've Got Ideology, With Millions Dead In Concentration Camps And Gulags.

Politics Is The Art Of Achieving Prestige And Power Without Merit.

Journalists Aren't Supposed To Praise Things. It's A Violation Of Work Rules Almost As Serious As Buying Drinks With Our Own Money Or Absolving The Cia Of Something.

Most Of The People Who Have Grabbed Hold Of Climate Change And Greenhouse Gases, Pollution, Oil Dependency - They Have Another Motive, And Their Motive Is To Attain The Appearance Of Virtue Without Having Actually Done Anything Virtuous.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race

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.

Liberals Have A Quaint And Touching Faith That Truth Is On Their Side And An Even Quainter Faith That Journalists Are On The Side Of Truth.

Humans Are The Only Animals That Have Children On Purpose With The Exception Of Guppies, Who Like To Eat Theirs.

Detroits Industrial Ruins Are Picturesque, Like Crumbling Rome In An 18th-century Etching.

I Rarely Meet A Politician That I Don't Like Personally. They Are Generally Well Endowed With Charm. Therein Lies The Danger.

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

We Also Have A Lot Of The Same Influences - We Both Read A Lot Of The Beatniks. And Yet What We Actually Do Is Almost Exactly The Opposite. His [ Hunter S. Thompson] Political Stuff Is Just Wonderful, But Basically Nothing Happens.

Now For Good Or Ill, California Is The Place Where Trends Tend To Be Set In Western Civilization - If Civilization Indeed It Is. California, For Several Generations Now, Has Been The Newest, Biggest, Most Experimental Place In The Newest, Biggest, Most Experimental Part Of Liberal Western Capitalism - Which Is Itself A New Experiment For Mankind.

Masochists Are People That Have Pleasure Confused With Pain. In A World That Has Television Confused With Entertainment, Doritoes Confused With Food, And Dan Quayle Confused With A National Political Leader, Masochists Are Clearly Less Mixed-up Than The Rest Of Us.

When I Get In Deep Water, I Prefer To Announce That I'm In Over My Head.

If We Do Our Deficit Spending On Weapons, At Least We Get Weapons. Then If We Need Weapons, We Have Them. If We Don't Need Them, No Harm Is Done.

Violence Is Interesting. This Is A Great Obstacle To World Peace And Also To More Thoughtful Television Programming.

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.

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

Never Be Unfaithful To A Lover, Except With Your Wife.

When Buying And Selling Are Controlled By Legislation, The First Things To Be Bought And Sold Are Legislators.

Funny Inspirational

When Adam Smith Was Being Incomprehensible, He Didn't Have The Luxury Of Brief, Snappy Technical Terms As A Shorthand For Incoherence.

The Chinese Had Gunpowder, But It Didn't Occur To Them To Put It In A Gun. They Possessed The Compass But Didn't Go Anywhere. They Invented Paper, Printing, And A Written Form Of Their Language, But Hardly Anyone In China Was Taught To Read.

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'.

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

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

Fishing... Is A Sport Invented By Insects And You Are The Bait.

There Are Lots Of Levels Of Fear And Complaint About The Government Getting Involved In Business. First And Foremost, Of Course, Is Incompetence.

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 Are A Nation That Worships Speed And Power. And For Good Reason. Without Power We Would Still Be Part Of England And Everybody Would Be Out Of Work... Bicycles Are Too Slow And Impuissant For A Nation Like Ours. They Belong In Czechoslovakia.

East Germany Was So Total In Its Totalitarianism That Everything Was Banned Which Wasn't Compulsory.

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

Democracies Have

On Michael Moore Tv Show, When He Went To The Home Of The Guy Who Invented The Car Alarm And Set Off All The Car Alarms On The Block... Pretty Funny.

Gossip Is What You Say About The Objects Of Flattery When They Aren't Present.

War Will Exist As Long As There's A Food Chain.

Many Reporters, When They Go To Work In The Nation's Capital, Begin Thinking Of Themselves As Participants In The Political Process Instead Of Glorified Stenographers.

If A Journalist Shows A Facility For Praise He's Liable To Be Offered A Job In Public Relations Or Advertising And The Next Thing You Know He's Got A Big Office, A Huge Salary And Is Living In A Fine Home With A Lovely Wife And Swell Kids - Another Career Blown To Hell.

In Case We Have To Shoot Democrats. It Happened During The Civil War, And It Could Happen Again.

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

Each Child Is Biologically Required To Have A Mother. Fatherhood Is A Well-regarded Theory, But Motherhood Is A Fact.

In General, Life Is Better Than It Has Ever Been, And If You Think That, In The Past, There Was Some Golden Age Of Pleasure And Plenty To Which You Would, If You Were Able, Transport Yourself, Let Me Say One Single Word : Dentistry.

The Democrats Said, "we Don't Know What's Wrong With America, But We Can Fix It." The Republicans Said, "there's Nothing Wrong With America, And We Can Fix That."

Don't Send Funny Greeting Cards On Birthdays Or At Christmas. Save Them For Funerals When Their Cheery Effect Is Needed.

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.

We're Told Cars Cause Pollution. A Hundred Years Ago City Streets Were Ankle Deep In Horse Excrement. What Kind Of Pollution Do You Want? Would You Rather Die Of Cancer At Eighty Or Typhoid Fever At Nine?

Whenever Government Proposes To Get Involved In The Regulation Of Trade, Just Be Very, Very Careful About Who's Behind This Proposal, What Their Motives Are.

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

Imagine Having Journalists In Your Own Home And Not Even Covering The Furniture With Plastic Sheets First.

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

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

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.

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

Money Is Preferable To Politics. It Is The Difference Between Being Free To Be Anybody You Want And To Vote For Anybody You Want. And Money Is More Effective Than Politics Both In Solving Problems And In Providing Individual Independence. To Rid Ourselves Of All The Trouble In The World, We Need To Make Money. And To Make Money, We Need To Be Free.

No One Has Ever Had A Fantasy About Being Tied To A Bed And Sexually Ravished By Someone Dressed As A Liberal

People Have A Right To My Food, A Right To My Housing, And A Right To My Good Job For My Decent Pay.

I Like Making Things. I Have A Wood Shop At Home. I Am A Terrible Carpenter But I Love Doing It.

Anyway, No Drug, Not Even Alcohol, Causes The Fundamental Ills Of Society. If We're Looking For The Source Of Our Troubles, We Shouldn't Test People For Drugs, We Should Test Them For Stupidity, Ignorance, Greed And Love Of Power.

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

I'm Certainly Not Fearful.

The Real Alternative To Power Of The Rich Is Not Power Of The Poor. It's Just Plain Power.

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.

You Know Your Children Are Growing Up When They Stop Asking You Where They Came From And Refuse To Tell You Where They're Going.

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

The People I See On Bicycles Look Like Organic-gardening Zealots Who Advocate Federal Regulation Of Bedtime And Want American Foreign Policy To Be Dictated By Unicef. These People Should Be Confined.

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

Ireland And The Irish

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.

Collectivism Doesn't Work Because It's Based On A Faulty Economic Premise. There Is No Such Thing As A Person's "fair Share" Of Wealth. The Gross National Product Is Not A Pizza That Must Be Carefully Divided Because If I Get Too Many Slices, You Have To Eat The Box. The Economy Is Expandable And, In Any Practical Sense, Limitless.

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.

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

Politics Is The Business Of Getting Power And Privilege Without Possessing Merit. A Politician Is Anyone Who Asks Individuals To Surrender Part Of Their Liberty - Their Power And Privilege - To State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, Or Whatever. This State, Those Masses, That Mankind, And The Planet Will Then Be Run By ... Politicians.

I Don't Even Know Which End Of A Computer One Is Supposed To Gaze Into. I've Never Used A Computer.

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.

I Couldn't Have Gotten Into Harvard With A Crowbar.

I Figured If I Could Put Together Being Funny About Stuff And Actual Events, Maybe I Could Do Something That Wasn't Being Done Much. Because The Reporters That I Met Out There Were Funny, And They Had Hilarious Stories That Just Didn't Fit In The Ap/upi/new York Times Foreign-correspondent Style. They Couldn't Use The Things They Had. But I Could.

The Wonder Is That Communism Lasted So Long. But Then Again, Modern Poetry Lasted A Long Time, Too.

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.

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

El Salvador Has The Scenery Of Northern California And The Climate Of Southern California Plus - And This Was A Relief - No Californians.

Everything That's Fun In Life Is Dangerous. Horse Races, For Instance, Are Very Dangerous. But Attempt To Design A Safe Horse And The Result Is A Cow ... It Is Impossible To Be Alive And Safe.

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.

Getting Down On All Fours And Imitating A Rhinoceros Stops Babies From Crying. (put An Empty Cigarette Pack On Your Nose For A Horn And Make Loud "snort" Noises.) I Don't Know Why Parents Don't Do This More Often. Usually It Makes The Kid Laugh. Sometimes It Sends Him Into Shock. Either Way It Quiets Him Down. If You're A Parent, Acting Like A Rhino Has Another Advantage. Keep It Up Until The Kid Is A Teenager And He Definitely Won't Have His Friends Hanging Around Your House All The Time.

The Three Branches Of Government: Money, Television, And Bullshit

How Much Fame, Money And Power Does A Woman Have To Achieve On Her Own Before You Can Punch Her In The Face?

A Hat Should Be Taken Off When You Greet A Lady And Left Off For The Rest Of Your Life. Nothing Looks More Stupid Than A Hat.

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

In Theory, Taxes Should Be Like Shopping. What I Buy Is Government Services. What I Pay Are My Taxes.

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