P. J. O'Rourke
Patrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourke is an American political satirist, journalist, writer, and author. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Since 2011 O'Rourke has been a columnist at The Daily Beast. In the United Kingdom, he is known as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s.
He is the author of 20 books, of which his latest, The Baby Boom: How It Got That Way (And It Wasn’t My Fault) (And I’ll Never Do It Again), was released January 2014. This was preceded on September 21, 2010, by Don't Vote! – It Just Encourages the Bastards, and on September 1, 2009, Driving Like Crazy with a reprint edition published on May 11, 2010. According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.
“The world is going to hell. All we can do is look good on the trip. ”
“Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by . . . politicians.”
“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”
“Wealth makes materialism easier to bear.”
“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. ”
“The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?”
“Never fight an inanimate object.”
“There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.”
“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.”
“Politicians are wonderful people as longa as they stay away from things they don't understand, such as working for a living.”
“Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.”
“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”