Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2025 Update)
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151. “The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

152. “Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

153. “Actually, there is no way of making vomiting courteous. You have to do the next best thing, which is to vomit in such a way that the story you tell about it later will be amusing.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

154. “In Western Australia they don’t even know how to make that vital piece of sailboating equipment, the gin and tonic.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

155. “One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world – and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East – is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn’t there. It has to do with history.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

156. “Women are successful in the business world because the business world was created by men. Men are babies. And women areGood With Kids.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

157. “Gambling is so pervasive in Nevada that maybe the state should just go the whole hog. There’d be gum machines that dispensed chewing tobacco if you lost. You could gamble for the toilet paper in public bathroom stalls. And fill out Keno cards in an attempt to win cancer therapy at the hospital.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

158. “Zen martini: A martini with no vermouth at all. And no gin, either.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

159. “My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you’re fortunate – and both of us are – you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

160. “Politics should be limited in scope to ware, protection of property, and the occasional precautionary beheading of a member of the ruling class.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

161. “Never fight an inanimate object.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

162. “Never serve oysters in a month that has no paycheck in it.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

163. “The motorcycle is a device created by the team of God and Darwin to rid the world of useless young males.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

164. “Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated – serious, bulky and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

165. “How did an allegedly free people spawn a vast, rampant cuttlefish of dominion with its tentacles in every orifice of the body politic?”

— P.J. O'Rourke

166. “Passover is my idea of a perfect holiday. Dear God, when you’re handing out plagues of darkness, locusts, hail, boils, flies, lice, frogs, and cattle murrain, and turning the Nile to blood, and smiting firstborn, give me a pass, and tell me when it’s over.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

167. “Any person who has spent time outdoors actually doing something, such as hunting and fishing as opposed to standing there with a doobie in his mouth, knows nature is not intrinsically healthy.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

168. “A charity ball is like a dance except it’s tax deductible.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

169. “You can’t get something for nothing. Everybody remembers this except politicians.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

170. “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.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

171. “Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

172. “Coffee and cigarettes are much better if you want an instant breakfast.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

173. “Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

174. “Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

175. “Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

176. “Ideology, politics and journalism, which luxuriate in failure, are impotent in the face of hope and joy.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

177. “Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony, or, as we call them these days, “getting in touch with your sexuality,” “raising your self-esteem,” “relaxation therapy,” and “being a recovered bulimic.””

— P.J. O'Rourke

178. “The purpose of the Senate is to keep 100 middle aged knuckleheads out of the private sector where they can do real harm.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

179. “I am no stranger to loud music. I’ve been to a Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels concert. I once dated a woman with two kids.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

180. “Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How’d they get so rich? Because they’re free.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

181. “We should never hesitate to listen to a fool about life because life is pretty foolish as far as I can tell.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

182. “There is a remarkable breakdown of taste and intelligence at Christmastime. Mature, responsible grown men wear neckties made of holly leaves and drink alcoholic beverages with raw egg yolks and cottage cheese in them.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

183. “Detroits industrial ruins are picturesque, like crumbling Rome in an 18th-century etching.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

184. “Every pleasure you forgoe on Earth is a pleasure you won’t get in heaven.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

185. “East Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn’t compulsory.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

186. “There are a lot of mysterious things about boats, such as why anyone would get on one voluntarily.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

187. “Ann Coulter to me is someone who says things that I say all the time, but I say them at three in the morning when I’m drunk as a monkey. She says them at three in the afternoon stone sober in bright daylight.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

188. “The weirder you’re going to behave, the more normal you should look.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

189. “The real truth about children is they don’t speak the language very well. They’re physically uncoordinated. And they are ignorant of our elaborate ideas about right and wrong.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

190. “The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

191. “There was an austerely dignified award ceremony. By that I mean we had to buy our own drinks – in clear violation of the international journalists’code of truth, fairness and an open bar.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

192. “I wonder if it changes the nature of a society for beauty to be so common. Maybe in Vietnam “She has a wonderful personality” really means something. But I couldnt figure out a polite way to ask.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

193. “After all, what is your host’s purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they’d have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

194. “You can’t shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

195. “Masochists are people that have pleasure confused with pain. In a world that has television confused with entertainment, doritoes confused with food, and Dan Quayle confused with a national political leader, masochists are clearly less mixed-up than the rest of us.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

196. “I think it’s been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

197. “If a journalist shows a facility for praise he’s liable to be offered a job in public relations or advertising and the next thing you know he’s got a big office, a huge salary and is living in a fine home with a lovely wife and swell kids – another career blown to hell.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

198. “Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

199. “Maybe a vague president and an incompetent and somewhat corrupt administration is what the nation needs.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

200. “Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.”

— P.J. O'Rourke