Latest P. J. O'Rourke Quotes from Interviews

Quotes about:

• It was Ronald Reagan who used to say that the 10 most frightening words in the English language are, "I'm from the federal government, and I'm here to help."

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Helping, Language

• Whenever government proposes to get involved in the regulation of trade, just be very, very careful about who's behind this proposal, what their motives are.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Regulation, Proposal

• One of the things that makes me a conservative, or a libertarian, or whatever the heck it is that I am - a person who doesn't much like big government - is that I do not like the concentration of the power.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Government, Libertarian, Conservative

• It is important to remember when reading Adam Smith or even when just thinking about Smith that the era that he lived in, we're not talking about poverty in a day when it meant not enough bedrooms for the kids, an old car, a black and white television. We're talking about a whole world where poverty meant not enough to eat.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Reading, Kids, Black And White

• Something that comes to us, some gym shoe that comes to us as a result of child labor from a brutal dictatorship, where people do not have basic freedoms, it wouldn't bug me to tax the living Dickens out of that thing or even to forbid its importation whatsoever. But that's a moral question, not an economic question.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Children, Shoes, People

• As long as we are on firm moral ground, as long as we're caring about other people, these are legitimate worries. The minute that we start protecting our own interests in the name of these worries and saying, "Oh, we have to make sure that only Ford Motor Company manufactures cars, because we can't be sure that the cars in other countries are being made quite up to our point of view," we're economically off base, and, of course, we're moral hypocrites, too.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Country, Hypocrite, Caring

• I covered the Lebanese civil war. I could see a place that had once been prosperous and now was impoverished. I'm not seeing that in America.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  War, America, Lebanese

• I don't see evidence of America being a poorer country than it was 20 years ago. I've seen impoverished devastation. I've seen places where things had been good and now they were very bad.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Country, Years, America

• If the dollar weakens, then presumably all the things that we make in the United States - Buicks, for instance - can be sold cheap all over the world, and everyone will be buying our goods, and we'll get all sorts of yen-denominated, or yuan-denominated, or euro-denominated securities, and then everybody else will be worried.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  United States, Dollars, World

• Nothing about economic growth in the United States over the course of the past 40, 50 years, during which time this has been continually happening, would indicate that we are being harmed in an overall sense by this.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Past, Years, Growth

• I've never been able to get it straight about what these people who are worried about the trade deficit are worried about. When they say that we're buying too much from overseas, that we're sending too many dollars overseas to get all these goods and services they got, they're saying that the American dollar is too strong and that is hurting our economy. And the result of this will be that the American dollar will get too weak, and that will hurt our economy.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Strong, Hurt, People

• There's no such thing as a trade deficit.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Trade, Deficit

  P.J. O'Rourke (2010). “DON'T VOTE - It Just Encourages the Bastards”, p.159, Atlantic Books Ltd

• It doesn't matter how many televisions and computers and pieces of stereo equipment the Chinese send to us, even if they're sending them to us only in return for some funny, little, green pieces of paper. That is a balanced trade. They got what they wanted: the green pieces of paper. We got what we wanted: the plush toys, the computers, the stereo components.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Chinese, Pieces, Television

• Any trade that is voluntarily made is mutually beneficial, by definition, and, indeed, is balanced, by definition.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Definitions, Made, Trade

• Globalization is simply opening the free marketplace to encompass the entire world.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  World, Globalization, Free Market

• Adam Smith pointed out that there were three things that make us more prosperous, in a general sort of way: freedom to pursue our own self-interest; specialization, which he called division of labor; and freedom of trade.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Self, Division Of Labor, Three

• Self-interest leads to honing your skills, the better to trade with.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Self, Skills, Interest

• When I get in deep water, I prefer to announce that I'm in over my head.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Deep Water, Water

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If I do, I say so. That's the only way out of that. If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words "I don't know." I mean, there are certain basic principles, like the dignity of the individual and the individual's responsibility, and certain basic economic principles, like how when something costs less, more of it will be consumed... There are certain things that I feel pretty confident about.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Mean, Responsibility, Magic

  Source: www.avclub.com

• Bob Wallace was my editor at Rolling Stone when I first started writing there, and he's a wonderful editor. I was in the Philippines during the Marcos overthrow, and I was up on what was called Smokey Mountain. I think it's gone now, but it was a garbage dump with a bunch of people living on it. I was talking to Bob on the phone, and I told him, "I'm a humorist. I can't write about this." And Bob told me to let my style be dictated by the subject, to take what I saw and write about it in the tone that it requires.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Writing, Thinking, Phones

  Source: www.avclub.com

• I like to take things that are boring-but-important and try to make them interesting. That was definitely what I was after with Eat The Rich.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Interesting, Important, Trying

  Source: www.avclub.com

• If you're doing a column, you kind of have to. Like in the back of Sports Illustrated, Rick Reilly has to find something to be mad about. It's not really the way I approach things.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Sports, Mad, Way

  Source: www.avclub.com

• [Al] Franken is left-wing and funny. He's a pretty good political humorist.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Wings, Political, Als

  Source: www.avclub.com

• [Michael] Moore doesn't really use his sense of humor that much.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Use, Sense Of Humor

  Source: www.avclub.com

• On Michael Moore TV show, when he went to the home of the guy who invented the car alarm and set off all the car alarms on the block... pretty funny.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Block, Home, Tv Shows

  Source: www.avclub.com