460 Quotes by P.J. O'Rourke

You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.

How a peaceful, uncrowded place with ample wherewithal stays poor is hard to explain. How a conflict-ridden, grossly over-populated place with no resources whatsoever gets rich is simple. The British colonial government turned Hong Kong into an economic miracle by doing nothing.

One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world – and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East – is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn’t there. It has to do with history.

Any random group of thirty Vietnamese women will contain a dozen who make Julia Roberts look like Lyle Lovett.

The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I’d say.

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.

I can understand why mankind hasn’t given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners – two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.

Journalists are notoriously easy to kid. All you have to do is speak to a journalist in a very serious tone of voice, and he will be certain that you are either telling the truth or a big, important lie.

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.