P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

In Serbia a lot of people hate me because they want to westernize, not understanding that the western world is bipolar, with very good things and very bad things.

Today when we say the West we are already referring to the West and to Russia. We could use the word 'modernity' if we exclude Africa, and the Islamic world, and partially China.

For almost a century since 1918, the centralised nation-state has been the world's default political form. Its various experiments in industrialisation, urbanisation, mass literacy and consumerism have brought more people into public life.

I don't know how you define 'neoconservatism,' but I think it's associated with trying to spread open political systems and democracy.

In Malaysia, where Western culture was extremely influential, I'd grown up listening to Elvis and the Beatles and watching American movies. People wanted to be like Americans. In contrast, when I got here, I saw prosperous middle-class American college students wanting to somehow join the Third World.

I do not believe that Communism will overwhelm the free world.

I have lived in Germany and know its language and literature, and the spirit and ideals of its rulers. Having given many years to a study of American capitalism. I am not blind to the defects of my own country; but, in spite of these defects, I assert that the difference between the ruling class of Germany and that of America is the difference between the seventeenth century and the twentieth.

The things and ways the West took to the rest have become the ways of the world.

Either you support the existing global elite, or you want real change and believe in nation-state democracy.

I am confident my Hindutva face will be an asset when dealing with foreign affairs with other nations.

I think democracy is on the decline in the West. Ruling parties are the same: neo-liberalism at home and wars abroad.

In America, they don't need to look outside their country for anything, so they definitely don't need to look elsewhere for rappers with weird accents that they have to get accustomed to, which is like homework to them.

The domination of western values, beliefs and way of life has angered many from the east and in developing countries.

Once enough Americans reacquaint themselves with Americanism, we should promote it to all countries just as the Left promotes leftism and Muslims promote Islam. One need not be American to affirm Americanism.

The three main sources of scepticism are first, that not every people desires freedom; second, that democracy in certain parts of the world would be dangerous; and third, that there is little the world's democracies can do to advance freedom outside their countries.

I did not support any more New York. I lived 10 years there, and after September 11, I felt very European. I did not share the opinion of people in the street, who were deeply influenced by what they heard in the media.

It's because we are so flooded with American culture that we're startled when we see ourselves up there on the screen.

Whether people like it or not, China is incredibly important to the future of mankind. For me, this is something that we all need to have intelligent discussions about in America, in Britain, in Europe.

Baldwin thought Europe was a bore, and Chamberlain thought it was only a greater Birmingham.

The focus of my research is how secular movements originated in West Asian countries and subsequently changed to pan-Islamic movements. The role of Western countries in this aspect is also a part of the research.

When the Soviet Union fell, optimistic scholars believed the world had shifted inexorably in the direction of free markets and liberal democracy. Instead, the West gradually embraced bigger government and weaker social bonds, creating a fragmented society in which the only thing we all belong to, as President Barack Obama puts it, is the state.

A monoculture is not only Hollywood, but Americans trying to export democracy.

So American culture is itself a hybrid and lends itself to use in other people's hybrids.

In Britain I'm sometimes regarded as a suspiciously Europeanized writer, who has this rather dubious French influence.

Some people think that as the Chinese economy becomes more and more capitalistic it will inevitably become more democratic.