Background Image

...

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.

-P. J. O'Rourke

...

Please Wait....
Translating....

The Government Is Huge,

P. J. O'Rourke

...

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.

Views: 25

Topic

More From P. J. O'Rourke

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.

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.

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.

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?

If The Dollar Weakens, Then Presumably All The Things That We Make In The United States - Buicks, For Instance - Can Be Sold Cheap All Over The World, And Everyone Will Be Buying Our Goods, And We'll Get All Sorts Of Yen-denominated, Or Yuan-denominated, Or Euro-denominated Securities, And Then Everybody Else Will Be Worried.

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

Any Trade That Is Voluntarily Made Is Mutually Beneficial, By Definition, And, Indeed, Is Balanced, By Definition.

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

Satire Doesn't Effect Change.

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.

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.

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.

The Vietnamese Hoa Were Merchants And Manufacturers. They Were Very Successful And Thus, According To The Logic Of Marxism, Responsible For Society's Failures. The Hoa Suffered The Same Fate As The Pizza Parlour In Spike Lee's Do The Right Thing Except At The Hands Of The World's Fourth Largest Army Instead Of A Small, Petulant Movie Director.

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

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.

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

Zen Martini: A Martini With No Vermouth At All. And No Gin, Either.

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.

Bill Maher Can Be Pretty Good, Except When He Gets "important." Maher's All Over The Place Politically.

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

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.

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.

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

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

.......the Poor Of The World Cannot Be Made Rich By 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. Economic Leveling Doesn't Work. Whether We Call It Marxism, Progressive Reform, Or Clintonomics, The Result Is The Same Slide Into The Stygian Pit. Communists Worship Satan; Socialists Think Perdition Is A Good System Run By Bad Men; And Liberals Want Us To Go To Hell Because It's Warm There In The Winter.

Creative Writing Teachers Should Be Purged Until Every Last Instructor Who Has Uttered The Words 'write What You Know' Is Confined To A Labor Camp. Please, Talented Scribblers, Write What You Don't. The Blind Guy With The Funny Little Harp Who Composed The Iliad, How Much Combat Do You Think He Saw?

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.

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.

You Can't Get Good Chinese Takeout In China And Cuban Cigars Are Rationed In Cuba. That's All You Need To Know About Communism.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Cars Would Be Safer On Rails!

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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

There's A Certain Kind Of Behavior In The Arab World That, To Me, Resembles The Way Young Men Behave When There Is No Significant Influence From Women In Their Lives.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

There Are A Lot Of Mysterious Things About Boats, Such As Why Anyone Would Get On One Voluntarily.

Mysterious Things

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.

Think About Last Time You Were Broke ... Now How Well Did It Go With Spending Your Way Out Of It? Did That Work?

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

Modern Air Travel Means Less Time Spent In Transit. That Time Is Now Spent In Transit Lounges.

In England, All The English Car Companies Were Beginning To Circle The Drain In A Series Of Well-deserved Failures And Bankruptcies, Earned By Making Lousy Products With Very Poor Production At High Prices. So, The Government, Back In The '70s, Nationalized All The British Car Companies. The Result Was British Leyland, A Name That Perhaps Doesn't Resonate Much With You.

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

I Think Michael O'donoghue Felt He'd Said What He Wanted To Say. In Fact, Nobody Thought We Could Spin It Out Long Enough To Make A Book.

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.

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

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.

A Lot Of Things Work Better In A Locomotive.

The Day Was Warm And Clear. Kids Were Playing Soccer In The Parking Lots And Women Were Sunning Their Babies And Having Their Tea All Over The Lawns. The Scene Was Entirely Too Cheery For Journalism.

The Sky Was So Clear That The Starlight Cast Shadows, And So Many Sparkles And Glitters And Glints Appeared Above Us That It Looked Like Something Really Expensive Had Been Dropped And Shattered In Heaven - God's Steuben Ashtray, Maybe.

I Don't Watch Much Television. Yeah, That's Pretty Funny. I Don't Know Where The Daily Show Stand Politically, Do You?

A Dugout Is Much Superior To A Conventional Manufactured Canoe Because You Can Get Soaking Wet Without Bothering To Capsize It.

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

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.

Adam Smith's Huge Failure Was The Fact That He Did Not Foresee The Industrial Revolution.

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

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

Whatever It Is That The Government Does, Sensible Americans Would Prefer That The Government Does It To Somebody Else. This Is The Idea Behind Foreign Policy.

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

A Nation With A Goofy Foreign Policy Needs A Very Serious Policy Of Defense.

The Three Branches Of Government Number Considerably More Than Three And Are Not, In Any Sense, 'branches' Since That Would Imply That There Is Something They Are All Attached To Besides Self-aggrandizement And Our Pocketbooks. ... Government Is Not A Machine With Parts; It's An Organism. When Does An Intestine Quit Being An Intestine And Start Becoming An Asshole?

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

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.

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

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."

First And Foremost: Feed People.

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.

The Road To Serfdom Was Written During Wwii, And Basically It's An Anti-nazi, Anti-communist Thing, But Also It's An Anti-conservative And Anti-labor-party Thing Aimed At The British. He Was An Austrian, Writing In Britain. And I Feel Like Now, I Guess, Everybody Pays Lip Service To Libertarian - And, Indeed, Many Conservative - Ideas, And Yet They Keep Moving Forward With An Increasingly Bureaucratic State. It Shows Itself In All Sorts Of Little Ways.

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.

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.

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

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.

I'm A Political Conservative.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

I Like The Fact That They Still Run Substantive Pieces. I'm Not Sure I Like The Pieces, But It's Nice That They Do That. Anyway, It Was Always Sort Of Ridiculous, Me Having Anything To Do With The Youth Culture, But Now That I'm In My 50s, It's Extra-double-ridiculous. They Were Losing Interest In Me, And I Was Losing Interest In Them. When I Went To Renegotiate My Contract At Rolling Stone, I Kind Of Halfheartedly Asked If I Could Do Half The Work For Half The Money, And They Asked If I Could Do Two-thirds Of The Work For Half The Money. I Ran That By My Agent, Since He Can Do Math.

Hunter S. Thompson And I Are Old Friends, But What We Do Is So Different. There Are Surface Similarities That Really Have To Do With Us Being Frustrated Poets.

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.

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

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 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.

In The Wake Of Animal House, All Of Us At The Lampoon Had A Lot Of Hollywood Opportunities. We Could Definitely Get People To Return Phone Calls.

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

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

I Was Managing Editor For A While [in National Lampoon ], And It Does Cause Business Problems When Your Circulation Goes Up.

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

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

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.

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.

The Only Time A Bachelor's Bed Is Made Is When It's In The Factory.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

In Western Australia They Don't Even Know How To Make That Vital Piece Of Sailboating Equipment, The Gin And Tonic.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

The Sport Of Skiing Consists Of Wearing Three Thousand Dollars Worth Of Clothes And Equipment And Driving Two Hundred Miles In The Snow In Order To Stand Around At A Bar And Get Drunk.

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.

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

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.

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.

Government Does Not Cause Affluence. Citizens Of Totalitarian Countries Have Plenty Of Government And Nothing Of Anything Else.

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

Daniel Patrick Moynihan Is The Archetypal Extremely Smart Person Who Went Into Politics Anyway Instead Of Doing Something Worthwhile For His Country.

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.

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.

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.

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.

I Like To Think Of My Behavior In The Sixties As A 'learning Experience.' Then Again, I Like To Think Of Anything Stupid I've Done As A 'learning Experience.' It Makes Me Feel Less Stupid.

Never Wear Anything That Panics The Cat.

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.

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.

Little Islands Of Human Happiness, Peace, And Prosperity Are So Exceptional At This Point In History That I'm Not Even Sure We Can Draw Lessons From Them.

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

The Founding Fathers, In Their Wisdom, Devised A Method By Which Our Republic Can Take One Hundred Of Its Most Prominent Numbskulls And Keep Them Out Of The Private Sector Where They Might Do Actual Harm.

A Girl Who Is Really Pretty - Whether She Wraps Herself In An Abayah, A Nun's Habit, Or The Front Hall Rug - Never Wraps Herself So That The World Can't Tell.

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.

I Read Good. I Was An English Major.

Germans Respond Well To Lies. At Least, They Always Have Historically.

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

Remember That All Tax Revenue Is The Result Of Holding A Gun To Somebody's Head. Not Paying Taxes Is Against The Law. If You Don't Pay Your Taxes, You'll Be Fined. If You Don't Pay The Fine, You'll Be Jailed. If You Try To Escape From Jail, You'll Be Shot. ... Therefore, Every Time The Government Spends Money On Anything, You Have To Ask Yourself, 'would I Kill My Kindly, Gray-haired Mother For This?'

It Is Very Hard Now To Shock People Into Thinking About Government Regulation And The Extent Of Government Involvement In Life.

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.

God Has No Role To Play In Politics Except To Make Sure Politicians Go Where They Belong. To Hell.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

I Do Have To Travel A Lot For Speaking Engagements.

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

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.

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.

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.

The Second Item In The Liberal Creed, After Self-righteousness, Is Unaccountability. Liberals Have Invented Whole College Majors--psychology, Sociology, Women's Studies--to Prove That Nothing Is Anybody's Fault. No One Is Fond Of Taking Responsibility For His Actions, But Consider How Much You'd Have To Hate Free Will To Come Up With A Political Platform That Advocates Killing Unborn Babies But Not Convicted Murderers. A Callous Pragmatist Might Favor Abortion And Capital Punishment. A Devout Christian Would Sanction Neither. But It Takes Years Of Therapy To Arrive At The Liberal View.

Sloths Move At The Speed Of Congressional Debate But With Greater Deliberation And Less Noise.

Keeping House Is As Unpleasant And Filthy As Coal Mining, And The Pay's A Lot Worse.

Liberalism Is Just Communism Sold By The Drink.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

Watching Republicans In Washington Is Like Watching Lemmings, If Lemmings Jumped Into Cesspools Instead Of Off Cliffs. Splash! There Goes Mark Foley!

B Students Work For C Students - A Students Teach.

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

I Live In New Hampshire. We're In Favor Of Global Warming. Eleven Hundred More Feet Of Sea-level Rises? I've Got Beachfront Property. You Tell Us Up There, "by The End Of The Century, New York City Could Be Underwater," And We Say, "your Point Is?"

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

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

I've Been A New Yorker For Ten Years, And The Only People Who Are Nice To Us Turn Out To Be Moonies.

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?

Smoking Crack Is A Way For People Who Couldn't Afford College To Study The Works Of Charles Darwin.

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

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

Funny Inspirational

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

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

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

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

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

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.

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

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.

Self-interest Leads To Honing Your Skills, The Better To Trade With.

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.

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

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

Family Love Is Messy, Clinging, And Of An Annoying And Repetitive Pattern, Like Bad Wallpaper.

I'd Like To End The Book A Lot Of Ways. Except I Don't Have Any Answers. Use Your Common Sense. Be Nice. This Is The Best I Can Do. All The Trouble In The World Is Human Trouble. Well, That's Not True. But When Cancer Cells Run Amok And Burst Out Of The Prostate And Take Over The Liver And Lymph Glands And End Up Killing Everything In The Body Including Themselves, They Certainly Are Acting Like Some Humans We Know.

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.

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

I Had Grown Up As A Feature Writer, And Basically My Career Had Been In The National Lampoon And As A Magazine Editor, And I'd Never Been A Reporter.

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

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

Trending Author

Oskar Schindler

Wentworth Miller

Category