Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
— P. J. O'Rourke
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial contest that is about to ensue.
Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.
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.
A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.
There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.
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.
Never wear anything that panics the cat.
Preachers at black churches are the last people left in the English-speaking world who know the schemes and tropes of classical rhetoric: parallelism, antithesis, epistrophe, synecdoche, metonymy, periphrasis, litotes - the whole bag of tricks.
The 1960s was an era of big thoughts. And yet, amazingly, each of these thoughts could fit on a T-shirt.
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.
Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.
There's one more terrifying fact about old people: I'm going to be one soon.
If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.
You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
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 Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.
Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
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.
America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.
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.
The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.
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.
Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.
The average IQ in America is - and this can be proven mathematically - average.
