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I Can Understand Why Mankind Hasn't Given Up War. During A War You Get To Drive Tanks Through The Sides Of Buildings And Shoot Foreigners - Two Things That Are Usually Frowned On During Peacetime.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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I Can Understand Why

P. J. O'Rourke

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I Can Understand Why Mankind Hasn't Given Up War. During A War You Get To Drive Tanks Through The Sides Of Buildings And Shoot Foreigners - Two Things That Are Usually Frowned On During Peacetime.

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

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

Mercedes Benz : A Mechanical Device That Increases Sexual Arousal In Women.

Good Manners Are A Combination Of Intelligence, Education, Taste And Style Mixed Together So That You Don't Need Any Of Those Things.

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?"

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.

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.... Trouble Doesn't Come From Slopes, Kikes, Niggers, Spics Or White Capitalist Pigs; It Comes From The Heart.

Everybody Knows How To Raise Children, Except The People Who Have Them.

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.

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

Greatest Generation Came Through Some Stuff That We Can't Even Imagine - The Depression, World War I - And All They Wanted After That Was A Breather And A Calm And A Quiet Life, And They Get Us.

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.

The Only Really Good Vegetable Is Tabasco Sauce. Put Tabasco Sauce In Everything. Tabasco Sauce Is To Bachelor Cooking What Forgiveness Is To Sin. The Next Best Vegetable Is The Jalapeno Pepper. It Has The Virtue Of Turning Salads Into Practical Jokes.

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.

Veal Is A Very Young Beef And, Like A Very Young Girlfriend, It's Cute But Boring And Expensive.

There Are Plenty Of Problems In The World, And Doubtless Climate Change - Or Whatever The Currently Voguish Phrase For It All Is - Certainly Is One Of Them. But It's Low On My List.

I Always Thought There Was Some Romance To That '30s Leftist Stuff, Even Though I'm A Republican.

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.

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

First And Foremost: Feed People.

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.

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.

Freedom Is Not Empowerment. Empowerment Is What The Serbs Have In Bosnia. Anybody Can Grab A Gun And Be Empowered. It's Not Entitlement. An Entitlement Is What People On Welfare Get, And How Free Are They? It's Not An Endlessly Expanding List Of Rights - The "right" To Education, The "right" To Food And Housing. That's Not Freedom, That's Dependency. Those Aren't Rights, Those Are The Rations Of Slavery - Hay And A Barn For Human Cattle.

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 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

How A Peaceful, Uncrowded Place With Ample Wherewithal Stays Poor Is Hard To Explain. How A Conflict-ridden, Grossly Over-populated Place With No Resources Whatsoever Gets Rich Is Simple. The British Colonial Government Turned Hong Kong Into An Economic Miracle By Doing Nothing.

We Won't Dispassionately Investigate Or Rationally Debate Which Drugs Do What Damage And Whether Or How Much Of That Damage Is The Result Of Criminalization. We'd Rather Work Ourselves Into A Screaming Fit Of Puritanism And Then Go Home And Take A Pill.

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.

Where Self-interest Is Violently Suppressed, It Is Replaced By A Burdensome System Of Bureaucratic Control Which Dries Up The Wellsprings Of Initiative And Creativity.

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

Bob Wallace Was My Editor At Rolling Stone When I First Started Writing There, And He's A Wonderful Editor. I Was In The Philippines During The Marcos Overthrow, And I Was Up On What Was Called Smokey Mountain. I Think It's Gone Now, But It Was A Garbage Dump With A Bunch Of People Living On It. I Was Talking To Bob On The Phone, And I Told Him, "i'm A Humorist. I Can't Write About This." And Bob Told Me To Let My Style Be Dictated By The Subject, To Take What I Saw And Write About It In The Tone That It Requires.

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

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

Jesse Jackson Was Spending Time With His Family, Or Families.

A Charity Ball Is Like A Dance Except It's Tax Deductible.

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

The Middle Eastern States Aren't Nations; They're Quarrels With Borders.

Normally, The Job Sucks But Work Is Kinda Fun, Because You See Your Friends And Flirt With Girls And Stuff.

The Russians Could Have Some (warheads) Aimed At Japan, So If We Act Up They Can Destroy Our Economy.

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

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

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

Something Is Worth What Somebody Will Pay For It. Nothing Else, Nothing More, Nothing Less.

Especially With A Magazine Like Lampoon, Which Was Very Dependent On Newsstand Sales. Our Readers Didn't Usually Occupy The Same Address Long Enough To Get A Subscription, Because They Were In College, Or They Were Hippies. So It Was Very Up-and-down, And We Had To Calculate How Many To Print, Which Was Always Sort Of A Headache From A Business Point Of View.

This Is The Most Elaborate And Luxurious Method Of Convincing Others That You Can Cook. Take Everybody Out On Your Yacht Until They're Green In The Face. Then You Can Rave For Weeks About Your Sauce Marinara And No One Will Gainsay You.

The Body Is Forever Teaching Us Lessons. There Are All Sorts Of Things That We Can't Do, Shouldn't Do, Had Better Not Do Very Often Or Do For Too Long As We Get Older. The Body Makes Its Presence Known.

Making Fun Of Born-again Christians Is Like Hunting Dairy Cows With A High Powered Rifle And Scope.

I'm A Member Of The Working Press; You'd Think I'd Know Better Than To Listen To Journalists.

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.

Government Conspiracy? They Can't Even Deliver Our Mail And It's Got Our Address On It And Everything!

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

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

Remember, Fda Employees Are Serious About Fear. We Pay These People To Panic About An Iota Of Rodent Hair In Our Chili, Even When The Recipe Calls For It. Fda Employees Are First-class Agonizers, World Champions At Losing Sleep. When Meryl Streep Got Hysterical About Alar, They Actually Checked The Apples Instead Of Meryl's Head.

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.

The Only Really Firm Rule Of Taste About Cross Dressing Is That Neither Sex Should Ever Wear Anything They Haven't Yet Figured Out How To Go To The Bathroom In.

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

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.

If You Think Health Care Is Expensive Now, Wait Until You See What It Costs When It's Free.

Gay Marriage Acceptance Is Happening In The Blink Of An Eye.

The Democrats Planned To Fiddle While Rome Burned. The Republicans Were Going To Burn Rome, Then Fiddle.

Government Subsidies Can Be Critically Analyzed According To A Simple Principle: You Are Smarter Than The Government, So When The Government Pays You To Do Something You Wouldn't Do On Your Own, It Is Almost Always Paying You To Do Something Stupid.

Cats Possess So Many Of The Same Qualities As Some Poeple That It Is Often Hard To Tell The People And The Cats Apart.

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.

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

Popular Culture Has Become Engorged, Broadening And Thickening Until It's The Only Culture Anyone Notices.

Popular Culture

It Was Ronald Reagan Who Used To Say That The 10 Most Frightening Words In The English Language Are, "i'm From The Federal Government, And I'm Here To Help."

If We're Going To Improve The Environment, The First Thing We Should Do Is Duck The Government. The Second Thing We Should Do Is Quit Being Moral. Screw The Rights Of Nature. Nature Will Have Rights As Soon As It Get Duties. The Minute We See Birds, Trees, Bugs, And Squirrels Picking Up Litter, Giving Money To Charity, And Keeping An Eye On Our Kids At The Park, We'll Let Them Vote.

The Old Woman Was Not Only Ugly With The Ugliness Age Brings Us All But Showed Signs Of Formidable Ugliness By Birth - Pickle-jar Chin, Mainsail Ears And A Nose Like A Trigonometry Problem. What's More, She Had The Deep Frown And Snit Wrinkles That Come From A Lifetime Of Bad Character.

Nobody Likes Insurance Companies, Especially Health Insurance Companies.

Insurance Companies

To Really Enjoy Drugs You've Got To Want To Get Out Of Where You Are. But There Are Some Wheres That Are Harder To Get Out Of Than Others. This Is The Drug-taking Problem For Adults. Teenage Weltscbmerz Is Easy To Escape. But What Drug Will Get A Grown-up Out Of, For Instance, Debt?

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.

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

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.

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.

Worshiping The Earth Is More Fun Than Going To Church. It's Also Closer.

Going To Church

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.

A World Government Run By The Un Will Be Like Getting An Old, Purblind, Half-deaf Substitute Teacher.

World Government

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

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

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.

A Little Government And A Little Luck Are Necessary In Life, But Only A Fool Trusts Either Of Them.

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

Neither Conservatives Nor Humorists Believe Man Is Good. But Left-wingers Do.

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

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.

Authority Has Always Attracted The Lowest Elements In The Human Race

Most Of Us Had Never Seen A Sober Redneck Before, And We Have The Reagan Landslide To Testify That None Of Us Ever Wants To See One Again. It Was A Horrifying Apparition. And Ever Since Jimmy Carter, All Of Us Rednecks Have Had To Be Very Careful To Be Drunk Rednecks Lest We Turn Into Some Kind Of Awful Creature With Big Buck Teeth And A State Department Full Of Human-rights Yahoos.

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

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.

Positive Rights Are The Right To Shelter, The Right To Education, The Right To Health Care, The Right To A Living Wage. These Things Are - These Are, I Would Call Them, More Properly, Political Rights Rather Than Positive Rights. And They Are Extremely Tricky, Because Now We Are Dealing With Things That Are Zero Sum.

What About Snipers?" I Once Asked Someone. He Said, "oh, Most Of The Snipers Have Automatic Weapon. They Arent Very Accurate.

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.

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

Asia Is The Continent Rhythm Forgot. At Best Asian Music Is Off-brand American Pop, Like Sonny Bono In A Karaoke Bar. At Worst Asian Music Sounds As If A Truck Full Of Wind Chimes Collided With A Stack Of Empty Oil Drums During A Birdcall Contest.

Liberalism Is Just Communism Sold By The Drink.

Once We Realized That There Were These 25 Invariable Types - The Class Politician, The Frigid Popular Girl, The Kid Who Tags Along Behind The Jocks - Once We Came Up With These Key Characters In A Cloud Of Marijuana, The Whole Thing Just Came Together. One Of The Things I'm Really Proud Of Is How Much Of A High-school Yearbook It Is In Its Look, So Much So That Hunter Publishing Had The Art Director, David Kaestle, And I Come For Years To Their Annual Convention And Do A Little Talk On How Not To Do A Yearbook.

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.

Some Jobs Are Worse Than Actual Wives. Ad Agency Vs. Matrimony, For Instance: Even The Most Capricious And Demanding Spouse Is Not Going To Divorce You For Refusing To Spend Forty Hours A Week Making Up Lies About Toilet Paper.

People Shouldn't Be Treated Like Objects. They Aren't That Valuable.

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 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.

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

People Love To Be Told What They Know Already. It's Not So Much That What They Say Is Wrong, Though Ann Coulter Does Seem To Be Completely Crazy.

How Did An Allegedly Free People Spawn A Vast, Rampant Cuttlefish Of Dominion With Its Tentacles In Every Orifice Of The Body Politic?

I'm Certainly Not Fearful.

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.

At The Core Of Liberalism Is The Spoiled Child — Miserable, As All Spoiled Children Are, Unsatisfied, Demanding, Ill-disciplined, Despotic And Useless. Liberalism Is A Philosophy Of Sniveling Brats.

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

There Is A Fine Line In The Third World Between Half A Dozen Customs Officials Waiting For You To Offer Them A Bribe And Half A Dozen Customs Officials Waiting For You To Offer Them A Bribe So They Can Throw You In Jail.

Who Does Bill Clinton Think Got Off The Boat And Stepped On Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps Volunteers?

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.

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.

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

Ireland And The Irish

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

Dates Used To Be Made Days Or Even Weeks In Advance. Now Dates Tend To Be Made The Day After. That Is, You Get A Phone Call From Someone Who Says, "if Anyone Asks, I Was Out To Dinner With You Last Night, Okay?"

Haitians Weren't Screwed-up, But Everything Political, Intellectual, And Material Around Them Is.

I Was Never In The Office [of Rolling Stone]. It Was Very Different From Lampoon, Where We Spent A Lot Of Time Together Socially, Which Is To Say "drunk."

Government Usually Doesn't Work. It Doesn't Work Because It Is Political. People Who Are Wise, Good, Smart, Skillful, Or Hardworking Don't Need Politics, They Have Jobs. The Difference Between The Political Process And An Honest Life Is The Difference Between Parading Around Waving Picket Signs While Hollering Catcalls In Front Of The White House And Getting Up In The Morning To Go Make A Living.

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

Funny Inspirational

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

Then Saturday Night Live Spawns... Well, Everything Right Down To American Pie 9, Where All Humor Has To Be Irrelevant, Which Can Get A Little Tiring.

Any Random Group Of Thirty Vietnamese Women Will Contain A Dozen Who Make Julia Roberts Look Like Lyle Lovett.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Term Limits Aren't Enough. We Need Jail.

When Are The World's Political Parties Going To Get Appropriate Symbols: Snake, Louse, Jackal, ... Trash Can, Clown Face, ... Dollar Bill With Bat Wings On It?

Nothing Bad Is Going To Happen To Us. If We Get Fired, It's Not Failure; Its A Midlife Vocational Reassessment.

If The Wind Is Blowing Like Stink And Everything Is Working Right, A Twelve-meter Sailboat Can Go Eleven And A Half Or Twelve Miles An Hour, The Same Speed At Which A Bond Lawyer Runs Around The Cental Park Reservoir.

If We're Free To Do What We Want, Why Does Government Always Have A Plan For Us?

In Japan People Drive On The Left. In China People Drive On The Right. In Vietnam It Doesn't Matter.

I Don't Think I'll Ever Be A Real Boat Reporter. My Rolex Isn't Big Enough.

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.

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.

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."

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.

There's A Very Good Reason That Governments Aren't Supposed To Compete With Private-enterprise Companies. Governments Have Monopolies On Certain Things, Like Eminent Domain And Deadly Force.

During The Mid-1980s Dairy Farmers Decided There Was Too Much Cheap Milk At The Supermarket. So The Government Bought And Slaughtered 1.6 Million Dairy Cows. How Come The Government Never Does Anything Like This With Lawyers?

A Cocktail Party Is What You Call It When You Invite Everyone You Know To Come Over To Your House At Six P.m., Put Cigarettes Out On Your Rug, And Leave At Eight To Go Somewhere More Interesting For Dinner Without Inviting You.

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

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

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

Government Work

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

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.

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.

You Can't Get Rid Of Poverty By Giving People Money.

I Am A Great Admirer Of Women.

A Lot Of Things Work Better In A Locomotive.

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.

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.

Some Women Want The Strong Silent Type, So They Can Tell Him To Shut Up And Rearrange The Furniture.

Gambling Is So Pervasive In Nevada That Maybe The State Should Just Go The Whole Hog. There'd Be Gum Machines That Dispensed Chewing Tobacco If You Lost. You Could Gamble For The Toilet Paper In Public Bathroom Stalls. And Fill Out Keno Cards In An Attempt To Win Cancer Therapy At The Hospital.

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."

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

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.

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

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 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'.

Journalists Are Notoriously Easy To Kid. All You Have To Do Is Speak To A Journalist In A Very Serious Tone Of Voice, And He Will Be Certain That You Are Either Telling The Truth Or A Big, Important Lie.

Hubris Is One Of The Great Renewable Resources.

Renewable Resources

Children Must Be Considered In A Divorce Considered Valuable Pawns In The Nasty Legal And Financial Contest That Is About To Ensue.

We Need A Government, Alas, Because Of The Nature Of Humans.

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

You Can't Shame Or Humiliate Modern Celebrities. What Used To Be Called Shame And Humiliation Is Now Called Publicity.

[al] Franken Is Left-wing And Funny. He's A Pretty Good Political Humorist.

There's Not A Woman In The Book, The Plot Hinges On Unkindness To Animals, And The Black Characters Mostly Drown By Chapter 29.

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.

Never Do Anything To A Clitoris With Your Teeth That You Wouldn't Do To An Expensive Waterproof Wristwatch.

Predicting Innovation Is Something Of A Self-canceling Exercise: The Most Probable Innovations Are Probably The Least Innovative.

Southern California Is A Nice Place, If You Could Cut Out The Show-business Cancer. It Just Keeps Spreading.

The Republican Convention, An Event With The Intellectual Content Of A Guns'n'roses Lyric Attended By Every Ofay Insurance Brokerin America Who Owns A Pair Of White Shoes.

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

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.

The Principal Feature Of American Liberalism Is Sanctimoniousness. By Loudly Denouncing All Bad Things — War And Hunger And Date Rape — Liberals Testify To Their Own Terrific Goodness. More Important, They Promote Themselves To Membership In A Self-selecting Elite Of Those Who Care Deeply About Such Things.... It's A Kind Of Natural Aristocracy, And The Wonderful Thing About This Aristocracy Is That You Don't Have To Be Brave, Smart, Strong Or Even Lucky To Join It, You Just Have To Be Liberal.

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

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.

It Is Important To Remember When Making Jokes About Women, That They Are Not A Minority. They Weren't Captured On Another Continent And Brought Here In Leg-irons (funny Shoes, Yes, But Not Leg-irons) And Hitler Didn't Blame Them For Germany's Loss In Wwi. Therefore, You Can Make Any Kind Of Fun Of Them You Want.

Rich White Protestant Men Have Held On To Some Measure Of Power In America Almost Solely By Getting Women, Blacks, And Other Disadvantaged Groups To Wear Crippling Foot Fashions. This Keeps Them Too Busy With Corns And Bunions To Compete In The Job Market.

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."

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.

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 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.

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

Name Me, If You Can, A Better Feeling Than The One You Get When You've Half A Bottle Of Chivas In The Bag With A Gram Of Coke Up Your Nose And A Teenage Lovely Pulling Off Her Tube Top In The Next Seat Over While You're Doing A Hundred Miles An Hour In A Suburban Side Street.

Imagine A Weight-loss Program At The End Of Which, Instead Of Better Health, Good Looks, And Hot Romantic Prospects, You Die. Somalia Had Become Just This Kind Of Spa.

There Are Just Two Rules Of Governance In A Free Society: Mind Your Own Business. Keep Your Hands To Yourself.

Mind Your Own Business

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

The Australian Language Is Easier To Learn Than Boat Talk. It Has A Vocabulary Of About Six Words.

The Great Thing About Being A Print Journalist Is That You Are Permitted To Duck. Cameramen Get Killed While The Writers Are Flat On The Floor. A War Correspondent For The Bbc Dedicated His Memoir To 50 Fallen Colleagues, And I Guarantee You They Were All Taking Pictures. I Am Only Alive Because I Am Such A Chicken.

Last Year, On A Long Car Trip, I Was Listening To Rush Limbaugh Shout. I Usually Agree With Rush Limbaugh; Therefore I Usually Don't Listen To Him. I Listen To Npr: "world To End-poor And Minorities Hardest Hit." I Like To Argue With The Radio.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There's Nothing Inherently Lame About Electricity. I've Got A Basement Full Of Power Tools That All Operate With Electricity, And They're Manly Items. And When You See A Great Big Locomotive Hauling A Mile Of Freight Cars, That's A Hybrid. A Lot Of People Don't Understand That.

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.

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