Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “The America’s Cup is like driving your Lamborgini to the Gran Prix track to watch the charter buses race.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

102. “Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free – indeed, sanctimonious – way for progressives to be racists.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

103. “El Salvador has the scenery of northern California and the climate of southern California plus – and this was a relief – no Californians.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

104. “Stay away from girls who cry a lot or who look like they get pregnant easily or have careers.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

105. “Marijuana is self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive, and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?”

— P.J. O'Rourke

106. “The Chinese had gunpowder, but it didn’t occur to them to put it in a gun. They possessed the compass but didn’t go anywhere. They invented paper, printing, and a written form of their language, but hardly anyone in China was taught to read.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

107. “Let’s reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools – and use it on the teachers.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

108. “Guns are always the best method for a private suicide. They are more stylish looking than single-edged razor blades and natural gas has got so expensive. Drugs are too chancy. You might miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

109. “The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

110. “Never do anything to a clitoris with your teeth that you wouldn’t do to an expensive waterproof wristwatch.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

111. “Greatest generation came through some stuff that we can’t even imagine – the Depression, World War I – and all they wanted after that was a breather and a calm and a quiet life, and they get us.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

112. “The neo-hippie-dips, the sentimentality-crazed iguana anthropomorphizers, the Chicken Littles, the three-bong-hit William Blakes- thank God these people don’t actually go outdoors much, or the environment would be even worse than it is already.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

113. “Last year, on a long car trip, I was listening to Rush Limbaugh shout. I usually agree with Rush Limbaugh; therefore I usually don’t listen to him. I listen to NPR: “World to end-poor and minorities hardest hit.” I like to argue with the radio.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

114. “The Middle Eastern states aren’t nations; they’re quarrels with borders.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

115. “God has no role to play in politics except to make sure politicians go where they belong. To hell.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

116. “There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change – or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is – certainly is one of them. But it’s low on my list.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

117. “The great thing about starting golf in your forties is that you can start golf in your forties. You can start other things in your forties but generally your wife makes you stop them, as Bill Clinton found out.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

118. “The Tenth Commandment sends a message to socialists, to egalitarians, to people obsessed with fairness, to American presidential candidates in the year 2000 – to everyone who believes that wealth should be redistributed. And that message is clear and concise: Go to Hell.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

119. “Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies, who like to eat theirs.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

120. “Christmas begins about the first of December with an office party and ends when you finally realize what you spent, around April fifteenth of the next year.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

121. “If the Japanese want to be taken seriously as world financial powers, they’d better quit using the same tailor as variety show chimps.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

122. “Never steal anything so small that you’ll have to go to an unpleasant city jail for it instead of a minimum-security federal tennis prison.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

123. “The old woman was not only ugly with the ugliness age brings us all but showed signs of formidable ugliness by birth – pickle-jar chin, mainsail ears and a nose like a trigonometry problem. What’s more, she had the deep frown and snit wrinkles that come from a lifetime of bad character.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

124. “The founding fathers, in their wisdom, devised a method by which our republic can take one hundred of its most prominent numbskulls and keep them out of the private sector where they might do actual harm.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

125. “Liberals have a quaint and touching faith that truth is on their side and an even quainter faith that journalists are on the side of truth.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

126. “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.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

127. “Whatever the occasion, do not neglect alcohol. No other refreshment will do. Yes, alcohol kills brain cells, but it’s very selective. It only kills the brain cells that contain good sense, shame, embarrassment, and restraint.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

128. “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.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

129. “The only really good vegetable is Tabasco sauce. Put Tabasco sauce in everything. Tabasco sauce is to bachelor cooking what forgiveness is to sin. The next best vegetable is the jalapeno pepper. It has the virtue of turning salads into practical jokes.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

130. “It’s better to make fun of yourself because you’ve always got someone around to make fun of, and they can’t sue you.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

131. “People shouldn’t be treated like objects. They aren’t that valuable.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

132. “People have a right to my food, a right to my housing, and a right to my good job for my decent pay.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

133. “Sometimes you need a B-2 bomber and sometimes you need your mother.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

134. “I believe that Western civilization, after some disgusting glitches, has become almost civilized. I believe it is our first duty to protect that civilization. I believe it is our second duty to improve it. I believe it is our third duty to extend it if we can.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

135. “At Epcot Center the Disney corporation has focused its attention on two things greatly in need of Disneyfication: the tedious future and the annoying whole wide world.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

136. “Walt is dead. And, after a couple of hours at Epcot, you’ll wish you were, too.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

137. “The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don’t go there they shoot you.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

138. “Hubris is one of the great renewable resources.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

139. “Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

140. “Wearing a hat implies that you are bald if you are a man and that your hair is dirty if you are a woman.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

141. “Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial contest that is about to ensue.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

142. “You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

143. “There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

144. “Anything that makes your mother cry is fun.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

145. “Who does Bill Clinton think got off the boat and stepped on Plymouth Rock? Peace Corps volunteers?”

— P.J. O'Rourke

146. “Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in Heaven.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

147. “Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

148. “Adam Smith’s huge failure was the fact that he did not foresee the industrial revolution.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

149. “Poverty can’t be eliminated by punishing people who’ve escaped poverty.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

150. “In case we have to shoot Democrats. It happened during the Civil War, and it could happen again.”

— P.J. O'Rourke