P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

In the mid-1980s, there was a grassroots desire for American culture. Maybe it was not a definite harbinger to what was to come in terms of the fall of the Soviet Union, but it certainly gave a heads up to the global merging of the retail culture.

Foreigners have a complex set of associations in their minds when they think of America - from Iraq to 9/11, certainly, but also from Coke to jeans. It is entirely possible for people around the world to love American products, American books, American movies, American music, and dislike the policies of the government of America.

We are guilty for sending teams into foreign countries to advise them how to be like us.

If French is no longer the language of a power, it can be the language of a counter power.

Sometimes, you'll watch the news and you'll see two-year-old boys in South Africa, wearing 'Spider-Man' t-shirts. It's such a global phenomenon.

Every citizen in every country in the world now grows up in two nations. Their own and Hollywood.

It's like everybody is obsessed with Hollywood movies worldwide. And even though everybody hates the Americans, they're still watching American movies.

Since 1948 I have spent every single day thinking how the economic and political worlds have changed.

The '90s were extremely diverse, almost like a laboratory of the new century. There was much experimenting around, in politics, economics, gender and family structures, and also in fashion. There was a cloud of possibilities which kept us all dizzy.

I have found that many other countries will buy off on anything American. As much as they hate us, they want to be us more than anything.

Even some of us who make movies underestimate their influence abroad. American movies sell American culture. Foreigners want to see American movies. But that's also why so many foreign governments and groups object to them.

I used to think that capitalism was human nature. Now I know that it is culture.

I will never be able to break the hold that America has on me.

The United States is rapidly becoming a colony of Japan.

It is a myth that most people throughout the world hate America. They hate the American government and the American military …. They love American culture—they have made it the world’s culture.

When you start exporting ideas, philosophy, behavior, products, ways of living, it becomes an assault on the culture. Americans have to understand that.

Cities have made the transition from industrial to service economies.

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

Many anti-American cartoons abroad depict Uncle Sam brandishing a dollar as a symbol of American civilization. There is more ignorance than malice in this platitude. As a matter of fact, it is not money, it is work which holds sway over American civilization.

You cannot rub off the effect of that conference from modern Africa today

I quickly came to realize that in the Middle East, God is God, and in the West, the sponsor is God - or, as I like to say, Tide detergent is God.

In 1959, Moscow gave space to an exhibition of American consumer goods, and my father, also a member of this generation, tasted Pepsi for the first time.

Once the Third World has become a mass market for the goods, products, and processes which are designed by the rich for themselves, the discrepancy between demand for these Western artifacts and the supply will increase indefinitely.

If there is cultural imperialism, it is definitely American.

While the Cold War had us questioning our next-door neighbors, big brands emerged to capture our trust. We became consumers.