Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

2. “B students work for C students. A students teach.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

3. “Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

4. “Mercedes Benz : A mechanical device that increases sexual arousal in women.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

5. “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.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

6. “Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and prove it.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

7. “When you think of the good old days, think one word: dentistry.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

8. “Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

9. “No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

10. “There is only one basic human right: the right to do as you please, without causing others harm. With it comes our only basic human duty: the duty to accept the consequences of our actions.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

11. “When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

12. “Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

13. “It’s better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

14. “Microeconomics is about money you don’t have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

15. “If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

16. “You can’t get good chinese takeout in China and cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That’s all you need to know about communism.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

17. “It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

18. “Each American embassy comes with two permanent features – a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas. Most demonstrators spend half their time burning Old Glory and the other half waiting for green cards.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

19. “A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something brussel sprouts never do.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

20. “Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

21. “You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

22. “There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

23. “You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal. Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

24. “And worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. This is especially true if we’re careful to pick the biggest possible problems to worry about. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody want to help Mom do the dishes.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

25. “Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

26. “In general, life is better than it has ever been, and if you think that, in the past, there was some golden age of pleasure and plenty to which you would, if you were able, transport yourself, let me say one single word : Dentistry.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

27. “Commies love concrete.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

28. “If I give up drinking, smoking, and fatty foods, I can add ten years to my life. Trouble is, I’ll add it to the wrong end.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

29. “Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

30. “Although computer-generated artificial intelligence eludes us, artificial stupidity has been perfected.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

31. “When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

32. “Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked “What’s the big idea?” knows, most big ideas are bad ones.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

33. “Smoking crack is a way for people who couldn’t afford college to study the works of Charles Darwin.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

34. “Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It’s also closer.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

35. “Golf combines two favorite American pastimes: taking long walks and hitting things with a stick.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

36. “When I became a man, I put away childish things and got more elaborate and expensive childish things from France and Japan.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

37. “We’ll run this planet as we please, and if you don’t like it, go back where we came from.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

38. “America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don’t think that way. We don’t think much at all, thank God. Start thinking and pretty soon you get ideas, and then you get idealism, and the next thing you know you’ve got ideology, with millions dead in concentration camps and gulags.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

39. “Government conspiracy? They can’t even deliver our mail and it’s got our address on it and everything!”

— P.J. O'Rourke

40. “Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

41. “Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don’t need any of those things.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

42. “People will tell you anything but what they do is always the truth.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

43. “Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

44. “There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

45. “The French are sawed-off sissies who eat snails and slugs and cheese that smells like people’s feet. Utter cowards who force their own children to drink wine, they gibber like baboons even when you try to speak to them in their own wimpy language.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

46. “A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

47. “Never wear anything that panics the cat.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

48. “To mistrust science and deny the validity of the scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You’d better go look for work as a plant or wild animal.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

49. “Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it’s cute but boring and expensive.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

50. “With Epcot Center, the Disney corporation has accomplished something I didn’t think possible in today’s world. They have created a land of make-believe that’s worse than regular life.”

— P.J. O'Rourke