01UndatedYou know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they're going.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
02UndatedWe all know how 'modern democracies take loaves from the wealthy.' It's the slipups in the 'pass them out to the poor' department that inspire a study of Economics.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
03UndatedThe weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
04UndatedEven I realized that money was to politicians what the eucalyptus tree is to koala bears: food, water, shelter, and something to crap on.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
05UndatedThere are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380 SL convertible.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
06UndatedLibertarianism is a way of measuring how the government and other kinds of systems respect the individual. At the core of libertarianism is the idea that the individual is sacrosanct and that anything that's done contrary to the well-being of the individual needs some pretty serious justification.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
07UndatedTeasing and a sense of humor, if you can develop that in your kids, and if you can exercise it with the kids, just makes for a pleasanter atmosphere.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
08UndatedI think that humor has become a principle means of communication among Americans about politics.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
09UndatedIdeology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
10UndatedThe idea of capitalism is not just success but also the failure that allows success to happen.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
11UndatedAdam Smith's huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
12UndatedThe Communist bloc of old was a study in the failure of failure. Losers in the Soviet economy were the people at the end of the long lines for consumer goods. Worse losers were the people who had spent hours getting to the head of the line, only to be told that the goods were unavailable.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
13UndatedChildren 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.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
15UndatedThere are a few things that people all around the world need to admit to themselves. Trade restraints slow economic growth, the euro is not a reserve currency, and scoreless sports ties are boring.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
16UndatedWhen I was fifteen, I dreamed of living in the big city, as many a young person does if he is artistic and sensitive. By 'artistic and sensitive' I mean short, skinny, unkissed, bad at sports, and carrying a C average in high school.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
18UndatedWhat Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
19UndatedA 'farm' today means 100,000 chickens in a space the size of a Motel 6 shower stall.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
21UndatedThe words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.'P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
23UndatedComputers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head cases we study in the social sciences. There's more opposable thumb in the digital world than I care for; it's awfully close to human.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
24UndatedDon't send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.P.J. O'Rourke / quote ↗
