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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.

-P. J. O'Rourke

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We Have No One

P. J. O'Rourke

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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.

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In The American Political System, You're Only Allowed To Have Real Ideas If It's Absolutely Guaranteed That You Can't Win An Election

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

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.

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.

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

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.

Never Fight An Inanimate Object.

Women Are Successful In The Business World Because The Business World Was Created By Men. Men Are Babies. And Women Aregood With Kids.

I Do Have To Travel A Lot For Speaking Engagements.

Think Of What Big Governments Have Gotten Up To In This Century : Not One, But Two World Wars, The Gulag, The Holocaust, Aerial Bombing Of Civilian Population Centers, The Berlin Wall, Nuclear Explosions, The Post Office. A Wicked Individual Might Want These, But He Wouldn't Have The Cash And Connections To Get Them. A Villainous Corporation Could Afford Them But Has To Market The Products. The Vietnam Draft Would Be A Tough Sell For Even The Most Fiendish Businessmen. "get Shot! Get Killed! Get Diseases From Foreign Women Who Despise You In Their Hearts!"

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

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

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.

Los Angeles Is Many Places In One Place.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

You Can Keep The Dining Room Clean By Eating In The Kitchen.

I'm Certainly Not Fearful.

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

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

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.

The Inherent Purpose Of American Government Is Let People Seek Their Own Goals And To Encourage Them To Be Responsible On The Various Adventures They Have On Their Way To Those Goals, Good, Bad, And Otherwise.

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

It Was To Be A Short Visit For The G-shevs. More Than Four Days In The U.s. And Raisa's Visa Card Bill Would Shatter The Fragile Soviet Economy.

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.

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.

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

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

Mysterious Things

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."

Writing This Book Required An Enormous Amount Of Help From Friends. To Them Goes The Credit. I'll Take The Money.

Fiscal Conservatism Is Just An Easy Way To Express Something That Is A Bit More Difficult, Which Is That The Size And Scope Of Government, And Really The Size And Scope Of Politics In Our Lives, Has Grown Uncomfortable, Unwieldy, Intrusive And Inefficient.

Smoking Cigarettes Seems To Alarm Peace Activists Much More Than Voting For Reagan Does.

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

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?

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.

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.

I Bought My First House Because Of Animal House.

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.

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

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

My Wife And I Both Come From Irish Families. There Are Two Kinds Of Irish Families: The Hitting Kind And The Kidding Kind. If You're Fortunate - And Both Of Us Are - You Come From The Kidding Kind Of Irish Family.

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.

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.

In Our Brief National History We Have Shot Four Of Our Presidents, Worried Five Of Them To Death, Impeached One And Hounded Another Out Of Office. And When All Else Fails, We Hold An Election And Assassinate Their Character.

I Went Back To Bumming Around New York, Writing Freelance Stuff For Car & Driver And Such.

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.

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.

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

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

There Are No Kinder Or Better People In The World Than Those Who Listen To You When You Are 18.

They Don't Like Anyone Who Isn't Korean, And They Don't Like Each Other All That Much, Either. They're Hardheaded, Hard-drinking, Tough Little Bastards, 'the Irish Of Asia'.

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

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.

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."

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.

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.

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

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

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

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.

The Idea Of A News Broadcast Once Was To Find Someone With Information And Broadcast It. The Idea Now Is To Find Someone With Ignorance And Spread It Around.

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

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

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Drugs Have Taught An Entire Generation Of Kids The Metric System

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.

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

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.

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

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

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

Passover Is My Idea Of A Perfect Holiday. Dear God, When You're Handing Out Plagues Of Darkness, Locusts, Hail, Boils, Flies, Lice, Frogs, And Cattle Murrain, And Turning The Nile To Blood, And Smiting Firstborn, Give Me A Pass, And Tell Me When It's Over.

Crazy Old People Are Our Entire Source Of Polling Information.

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

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.

The Commies Are The Only People On Earth Who Think Star Wars Will Work. If They're That Gullible, Maybe We Should Have Held The Summit At Atlantic City And Let Them Lose All Their Missiles Playing Keno.

Each American Embassy Comes With Two Permanent Features - A Giant Anti-american Demonstration And A Giant Line For American Visas. Most Demonstrators Spend Half Their Time Burning Old Glory And The Other Half Waiting For Green Cards.

Coffee And Cigarettes Are Much Better If You Want An Instant Breakfast.

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

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

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

The Proper Behavior All Through The Holiday Season Is To Be Drunk. This Drunkenness Culminates On New Year's Eve, When You Get So Drunk You Kiss The Person You're Married To.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

Anything That Makes Your Mother Cry Is Fun

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.

[kurt] Vonnegut Once Said, If You Ever Want To Know Who Somebody Is... Like You Look At Richard Nixon, Or Adolf Hitler, Or Ralph Nader, Or Anybody Who Seems Like A Difficult Person To Understand, And Is Therefore Not Part Of The Pattern Of Human Behavior. Think About Who They Were In High School, And They Will Explain Themselves To You. So We Got A Hold Of, Like, 50 High-school Yearbooks, Including My Mom's From 1925 Or Something, And We Discovered That They're All The Same.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

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?

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.

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

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

This Going On And On About How Terrible A Carbon-based Economy Is, These People Are Full Of Crap. They Don't Know What They're Talking About. Their Motives Are Not Necessarily Good Just Because They Say They Are Being Good. It's Peace, Love, And Understanding. To Which I Can Just Say, "shut Up." Human Liberty, Rule Of Law, And Free Markets Fix This Stuff. It Isn't Necessary To Go Around Being The Mia Farrow Of The Ecosphere.

At Epcot Center The Disney Corporation Has Focused Its Attention On Two Things Greatly In Need Of Disneyfication: The Tedious Future And The Annoying Whole Wide World.

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.

A U.s. Dollar Is An Iou From The Federal Reserve Bank. It's A Promissory Note That Doesn't Actually Promise Anything. It's Not Backed By Gold Or Silver.

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

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.

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

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

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.

Very Little Is Known Of The Canadian Country Since It Is Rarely Visited By Anyone But The Queen And Illiterate Sport Fishermen.

The Morning Meal Was Served In Traditional Socialist Fashion - Very Slowly, With The Courses Out Of Order So That The Jelly Arrived Half An Hour After The Toast And The Coffee Didn't Come Until We'd Called For The Check. However, It Was Hard To Be Angry At A Place That Had Ice Cream, Beer, And Cigarettes On Its Breakfast Menu.

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

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

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.

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

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

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 Suppose I Should Get A Vcr, But The Only Thing I Like About Television Is Its Ephemerality.

It's The Squares Who Know How To Fly The Fighter Planes And Operate The Missiles And The Bombs And Work The M-16s. Liberals Would Still Be Fumbling With The Federally Mandated Trigger Locks.

What Would Be A Road Hazard Anywhere Else, In The Third World Is Probably The Road.

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.

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

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.

Politicians Are Wonderful People As Longa As They Stay Away From Things They Don't Understand, Such As Working For A Living.

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.

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

Ireland And The Irish

No Humorist Is Under Any Obligation To Provide Answers And Probably If You Were To Delve Into The Literary History Of Humour It's Probably All About Not Providing Answers Because The Humorist Essentially Says: This Is The Way Things Are.

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

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

It's Better To Make Fun Of Yourself Because You've Always Got Someone Around To Make Fun Of, And They Can't Sue You.

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

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

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

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

[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?

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.

One Of The Problems With Being A Writer Is That All Of Your Idiocies Are Still In Print Somewhere. I Strongly Support Paper Recycling.

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.

America Is The World's Policeman, All Right -- A Big, Dumb, Mick Flatfoot In The Middle Of The One Thing Cops Dread Most, A "domestic Disturbance.

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

Industrialization Came To England But Has Since Left.

Industrialization

Wearing A Hat Implies That You Are Bald If You Are A Man And That Your Hair Is Dirty If You Are A Woman.

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

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

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

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.

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

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

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

I Have Three Children And Three Dogs. You Put Them In A Prius, You Know? People Who Have A Prius Obviously Have No Life! No Wife, No Kids, No Pets - There's No Room In There For Anything!

You May Be Surprised To Discover You're Rich, Especially If You're Broke.

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

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?

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.

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.

You Know, If Government Were A Product, Selling It Would Be Illegal. Government Is A Health Hazard. Governments Have Killed Many More People Than Cigarettes Or Unbuckled Seat Belts Ever Have.

Government Proposes, Bureaucracy Disposes. And The Bureaucracy Must Dispose Of Government Proposals By Dumping Them On Us.

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

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.

Every Generation Finds The Drug It Needs.

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.

Civilization Is An Enormous Improvement On The Lack Thereof.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

I Think It's Been Hard For People To Understand How Islam Can Be A Good Religion, And Yet The Islamists Are Evil. Those Of Us Who Have Had Experience With Islam Understand This, Just As We Understand The Difference Between Snake Handlers And People Going To Church On Sunday Morning.

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.

I'll Be 56 This Year, I've Got Two Kids, And I Think It's Probably Time To Go Back To Writing One-glove Jokes.

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?'

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

The Great Thing About Starting Golf In Your Forties Is That You Can Start Golf In Your Forties. You Can Start Other Things In Your Forties But Generally Your Wife Makes You Stop Them, As Bill Clinton Found Out.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Jewishness Cropped Up And Has Never Successfully Been Put Down Since.

Giving Money And Power To Government Is Like Giving Whiskey And Car Keys To Teenage Boys.

There's A Whiff Of The Lynch Mob Or The Lemming Migration About Any Overlarge Concentration Of Like-thinking Individuals, No Matter How Virtuous Their Cause.

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

If The Japanese Want To Be Taken Seriously As World Financial Powers, They'd Better Quit Using The Same Tailor As Variety Show Chimps.

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

Government Work

Humans Have Trouble With Economics, As You May Have Noticed, And Not Just Because Economic Circumstances Sometimes Cause Them To Starve. Humans Seem To Have An Innate Inability To Pay Attention To Economic Principles.

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

Mind Your Own Business

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