Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

155. “The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

157. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

159. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

161. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

163. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

165. “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

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “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

170. “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

171. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

173. “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

174. “Never fight an inanimate object.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

178. “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

179. “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

180. “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

181. “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

182. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

184. “Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

185. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

189. “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

190. “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

191. “Term limits aren’t enough. We need jail.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

192. “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

193. “Thanksgiving is so called because we are all so thankful that it only comes once a year.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

195. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

197. “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

198. “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

199. “France in August when you can travel through the entire country without encountering a single pesky Frenchman or being bothered with anything that’s open for business.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke