Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2025 Update)
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201. “Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

202. “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

203. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

205. “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

206. “To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

208. “Generally it’s not a good idea to wear Banana Republic – type khaki journalist clothes in a war zone. You might look too much like something that’s supposed to be shot, such as a journalist.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

209. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

211. “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

212. “Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

213. “The very existence of the bicycle is an offense to reason and wisdom.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

214. “Civilization is an enormous improvement on the lack thereof.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

215. “The commies are the only people on earth who think Star Wars will work. If they’re that gullible, maybe we should have held the summit at Atlantic City and let them lose all their missiles playing Keno.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

216. “If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat – in other words, turn you into an adult.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

217. “I’m a rather decisive type.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

218. “I’m really tired of virtue.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

219. “As a libertarian I believe we should have a federal government simple and circumscribed enough to be run by an average, dull, normal American. With George W. Bush we have half the equation in place.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

220. “Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals when their cheery effect is needed.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

222. “Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

223. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

225. “The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you’re rich.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

226. “Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn’t do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

227. “What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

228. “There are no kinder or better people in the world than those who listen to you when you are 18.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

229. “Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it’s the only culture anyone notices.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

231. “We had a choice between Democrats who couldn’t learn from the past and Republicans who couldn’t stop living in it...”

— P.J. O'Rourke

232. “I suppose I should get a VCR, but the only thing I like about television is its ephemerality.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

233. “Abstract anger is great for rhetorical carrying on. You can go on endlessly about the post office, but it doesn’t mean you’re mad at your mailman.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

234. “I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

235. “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

236. “Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I’m not even sure we can draw lessons from them.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

237. “The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I’d say.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

238. “I didn’t see any NRA officials killing babies in Waco...”

— P.J. O'Rourke

239. “You can keep the dining room clean by eating in the kitchen.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

240. “Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

241. “Human problems are complex. If something isn’t complex it doesn’t qualify as problematic. Very simple bad things are not worth troubling ourselves about.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

242. “Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs. Splash! There goes Mark Foley!”

— P.J. O'Rourke

243. “We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

244. “If you say a modern celebrity is an adulterer, a pervert and a drug addict, all it means is that you’ve read his autobiography.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

245. “Fishing is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

246. “Every generation finds the drug it needs.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

247. “If we’re free to do what we want, why does government always have a plan for us?”

— P.J. O'Rourke

248. “A nation with a goofy foreign policy needs a very serious policy of defense.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

249. “The Republican convention, an event with the intellectual content of a Guns’n’Roses lyric attended by every ofay insurance brokerin America who owns a pair of white shoes.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

250. “Never strike anyone so old, small or weak that verbal abuse would have sufficed.”

— P.J. O'Rourke