Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2026 Update)
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151. “There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

153. “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

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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

162. “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

163. “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

164. “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

165. “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

166. “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

167. “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

168. “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

169. “Whenever people tell you they are going to wipe the slate clean, it’s your slate they mean to wipe.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

170. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

173. “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

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. “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

177. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

179. “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

180. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

182. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

185. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

187. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

190. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

192. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

196. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

198. “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

199. “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

200. “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