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" I've only been to New Zealand once, about 1989. It was incredibly beautiful, kind of like the ideal of where I live in New England - all that and then some - but I can't say I was there long enough to get any very clear idea. "

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" A friend of mine at the American Enterprise Institute says there are two parties: the silly party and the stupid party. I'm too old for the silly party, so I had to join the stupid party. "

P. J. O'Rourke

American

Party

Friend

" Simply because something is a populist movement doesn't make it either good or bad. "

" Charles McCarry is the best modern writer on the subject of intrigue - by the breadth of Alan Furst, by the fathom of Eric Ambler, by any measure. "

" 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. "

" The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. "

" No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession. "

" As murderous industrial magnates go, Alfred Nobel is right up there with Ray Kroc, franchiser of McDonald's. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Ray

Right

" Everybody in America who didn't come over the Bering Strait ice bridge stole his land from somebody else. "

" If you spend 72 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. Either that or you're President Obama. "

" 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. "

" Banning paper and plastic and making shoppers carry their groceries home in their mouths like dogs is just the thing to make a little tin humanist in the Obama West Wing think he's admiral of the Uzbek Navy. "

" Seriousness is stupidity sent to college. "

" America's grossly unfair tax system won't lead to class war. Or, if it does, the war will be brief. "

" 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. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Life

Friends

" Governments have monopolies on certain things, like eminent domain and deadly force. "

" 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 world is being run by irresponsible spoiled brats. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

" Children live in the only successful Marxist state ever created: the family. 'From each according to his ability, to each according to his need' is the family's practice as well as its theory. Even with today's scattershot patterns of marriage and parenting, a family is collectivist to a more than North Korean degree. "

" I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3,200 kids, and I had grade school classes with 40-some kids. Discipline was rigid. Most of the learning was rote. It worked. "

" Nobody is making Americans buy Chinese goods. "

" 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. "

" The average IQ in America is - and this can be proven mathematically - average. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Proven

Average

" Adam Smith is misread as being amoral precisely because people don't read his first book, because they don't read 'The Theory of Moral Sentiments.' "

" In Israel, waves of anger and fear circulate all the time, but so do jokes and gossip and silky evening breezes. So, too, in America. "

" I like to have interesting things to write about. And when one says something is 'interesting,' one almost always means 'bad.' "

P. J. O'Rourke

Bad

Interesting

" The words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.' "

" In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is government services. What I pay are my taxes. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Taxes

Government