Great Throughts Treasury

"Some may decry the impeachment of William Jefferson Clinton as a national trauma, but not humorist P.J. O'Rourke, who thinks the proceedings are a win-win situation -- and grand entertainment to boot. Mr. O'Rourke, writing in the latest issue of the Weekly Standard, acknowledges that some earnest souls have gone so far as to aver that impeachment has distracted President Clinton from ... raising taxes, destroying health care, appointing 1960s bake-heads to high political office, soliciting felonious campaign contributions, hanging friends out to dry for Arkansas real estate frauds, giving missile secrets to the Chinese, taking credit for the benefits of a free market about which he knows little and cares less, using U.S. military forces as fig leaves for domestic scandals and au pairs for the U.N., leading foreign policy back into the flea circus of Jimmy Carterism, having phone sex, groping patronage seekers, and snapping the elastic on the underpants of psychologically disturbed school-age White House interns entrusted with the task of delivering high-level government pizza."

"Some people have facts; these can be proven. Some people have theories; these can be disproven. But people with opinions are mindless and have their minds made up about it."

"Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I'm worried about the difference between wrong and fun."

"Some people are better imagined in one's bed than found there in the morning."

"Some people say a front-engine car handles best. Some people say a rear-engine car handles best. I say a rented car handles best."

"Something is happening to America, not something dangerous but something all too safe. I see it in my lifelong friends. I am a child of the "baby boom," a generation not known for its sane or cautious approach to things. Yet suddenly my peers are giving up drinking, giving up smoking, cutting down on coffee, sugar, and salt. They will not eat red meat and go now to restaurants whose menus have caused me to stand on a chair yelling, "Flopsy, Mopsy, Cottontail, dinner is served!" This from the generation of LSD, Weather Underground, and Altamont Rock Festival! And all in the name of safety! Our nation has withstood many divisions?North and South, black and white, labor and management?but I do not know if the country can survive division into smoking and non-smoking sections."

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

"Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization - an appeal to civilization itself."

"Some people think that welfare reform should have hurt Bill Clinton with black voters."

"Something that confirms all fears and many conspiracy theories about government is finding out what our elected representatives would put into law if they could."

"Some taxpayers may object to a print journalism bailout on the grounds that it mostly benefits the liberal elite. And we can't blame taxpayers for being reluctant to subsidize the reportorial careers of J-school twerps who should have joined the Peace Corps and gone to Africa to 'speak truth to power' to Robert Mugabe."

"Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce."

"Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less."

"Stupid is a great force in human affairs."

"Space has always been confusing to politics."

"Sucking the fun out of life has always been an important component of politics."

"Supposedly, summer vacation happens because that's when the kids are home from school, although having the kids home from school is no vacation. And supposedly the kids are home from school because of some vestigial throwback to our agricultural past."

"Teasing 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."

"Term limits aren't enough. We need jail."

"Tel Aviv is new, built on the sand dunes north of Jaffa in the 1890s, about the same time Miami was founded. The cities bear a resemblance in size, site, climate, and architecture, which ranges from the bland to the fancifully bland."

"The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt."

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

"Thank you, Occupy Wall Street. With your vivid example of anti-capitalist squalor, I've been able to convince all three of my children to become investment bankers."

"The 18,000 NASA employees are full of galactic talents and abilities and are ready to accomplish whatever they're directed to do."

"The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge pi¤ata -- a Paper-Mache donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budget and other goodies. The American voter is blindfolded and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some sense into the silly bastard."

"The Affordable Health Care for Americans Act, passed by the House of Representatives on November 7, 2009, was 1,990 pages long. You could stand on it to paint the ceiling. The entire U.S. Constitution can be printed on eight pages. That's eight pages to run a whole country for 221 years versus four reams of government pig latin if you slam your thumb in a car door."

"The America's Cup is like driving your Lamborghini to the Grand Prix track to watch the charter buses race."

"The Afghans themselves say that if you put two Afghans in a room, you get three factions."

"The Australian language is easier to learn than boat talk. It has a vocabulary of about six words."

"The anti-individualist enemies that Ayn Rand battled are still the enemy, but they've shifted their line of attack. Political collectivists are no longer much interested in taking things away from the wealthy and creative."

"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."

"The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it."

"The bar is set pretty low if you want to be a hip, accessible conservative."

"The Bible is very clear about one thing: Using politics to create fairness is a sin."

"The body is forever teaching us lessons. There are all sorts of things that we can't do, shouldn't do, had better not do very often or do for too long as we get older. The body makes its presence known."

"The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs."

"The bullying of citizens by means of dreads and fights has been going on since Paleolithic times. Greenpeace fund-raisers on the subject of global warming are not much different than the tribal Wizards on the subject of lunar eclipses. 'Oh no, Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me silver and I will make him spit her out."

"The budget doesn't have much control over the government. Then again, the government doesn't have much control over the budget."

"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? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn?t Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?"

"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."

"The C student starts a restaurant. The A student writes restaurant reviews."

"The 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."

"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."

"The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world."

"The Dignified Way to Vomit: Remain standing. With right hand, hold cocktail to the side at arm's length. Bow deeply at the waist. Include all regurgitation in one retch. Resume upright position. Use left hand to wipe mouth with handkerchief (not toilet paper). Take another drink."

"The District of Columbia is an extreme example of disconnect between financial input and educational outcome. Unfortunately, extreme is not the same as abnormal."

"The divorce rate in 1946 was higher than it ever had been and as high as it ever would be until the '70s. The reason was that prior relationships had not endured the strain of war."

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

"The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy- a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind."

"The first nine Commandments concern theological principles and social law. But then, right at the end, is 'Don't envy your buddy's cow.' How did that make the top ten? What's it doing there? Why would God, with just ten things to tell Moses, choose as one of those things jealousy about the starter mansion with in-ground pool next door? Yet think how important the Tenth Commandment is to a community, to a nation, indeed to a presidential election. If you want a mule, if you want a pot roast, if you want a cleaning lady, don't be a jerk and whine about what the people across the street have ? go get your own. The Tenth Commandment sends a message to all the jerks who want redistribution of wealth, higher taxes, more government programs, more government regulation, more government, less free enterprise, and less freedom. And the message is clear and concise: Go to hell."