Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2024 Update)
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151. “Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

152. “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

153. “Never fight an inanimate object.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

155. “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

156. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

158. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

160. “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

161. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

163. “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

164. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

166. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

173. “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

174. “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

175. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

177. “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

178. “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

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

184. “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

185. “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

186. “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

187. “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

188. “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

189. “Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

191. “Wherever there’s injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it’s happening.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

192. “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

193. “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

194. “Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

196. “You can always reason with a German. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

197. “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

198. “Everything on a boat has a different name than it would have if it weren’t on a boat. Either this is ancient seafaring tradition or it’s how people who mess around with boats try to impress the rest of us who actually finished college.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

199. “Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

200. “Predicting innovation is something of a self-canceling exercise: the most probable innovations are probably the least innovative.”

— P.J. O'Rourke