P. J. O'Rourke

I'm old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.

I rarely meet a politician that I don't like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

All change is bad. But sometimes it has to be done.

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

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.

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.

Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.

As I get older all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one's friends' and relatives' children.

Southern California is a nice place if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

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.

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.

Government proposes bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.

I'm a political conservative.

If government were a product selling it would be illegal.

There is only one basic human right the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty the duty to take the consequences.

You can learn all about the human condition from covering the crime beat in a big city - you don't need to go to Beirut for that - but a foreign correspondent begins to understand poverty from a different perspective.