Get QuoteDark Inspirational Quotes App

" The importance of local governance may not be obvious to an America accustomed to treating city and state downfalls with doses of federal comeuppance. Sometimes there's a reason for that - the Civil War. More often, all reasoning seems absent - No Child Left Behind. "

Related Quotes:

" The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the General Livestock Corporation assembly line putting udders on cows. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Line

You

Retirement

" If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas. "

" Everybody is xenophobic to an extent. "

" 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. "

" I've got a 1990 Porsche 911. It's just a Carrera, a very simple, straightforward little thing that goes like stink. I love it. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Got

Love

" We all know the types who listen to Pete Seeger songs; even Pete admits they aren't interesting. "

" The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unions. The problem is not underfunding or lack of computer equipment. The problem is your damn kids. "

" Why can't death - if we must have it - be always glorious, as in 'The Iliad?' "

" Never wear anything that panics the cat. "

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

" Liberals are always proposing perfectly insane ideas, laws that will make everybody happy, laws that will make everything right, make us live forever, and all be rich. Conservatives are never that stupid. "

" My generation of Americans was the first to really care about racism and sexism, not to mention the I Ching, plus, of course, the Earth. "

" The baby boomers' politics have covered a wide band of silliness, from the Weather Underground to the Timothy McVeigh types. The great majority of us are well in the middle of that spectrum, but still, there's been both leftie silliness and right-wing silliness. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Politics

Weather

" Once you've built the big machinery of political power, remember you won't always be the one to run it. "

" Toledo is better than exciting, it's happy. Because nothing is more conducive to unhappiness than taking yourself seriously, and taking yourself seriously is difficult when you're baseball team is the Mud Hens. "

" Only a few good leaders have paused to reflect seriously on being leaders. "

" Writing is agony. I hate it. "

" Detroit's industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Industrial

Ruins

" The First Amendment only says 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' It can disrespect all it wants. "

" Inside every Sancho Panza there's a Don Quixote struggling to get out. "

" Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial contest that is about to ensue. "

" Barack Obama is more irritating than the other nuisances on the Left. "

P. J. O'Rourke

Irritating

Left

" The people who despise America are the editors of the 'New Statesman.' Their green-card applications must have been turned down. "

" The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for politics. "

" I'm a rather decisive type. "

" I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements. "

" The 20th century was a test bed for big ideas - fascism, communism, the atomic bomb. "

" 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. "

" There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible. "

" 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. "