Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2026 Update)
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251. “Fishing is a sport invented by insects and you are the bait.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

252. “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

253. “In Japan people drive on the left. In China people drive on the right. In Vietnam it doesn’t matter.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

255. “To really enjoy drugs you’ve got to want to get out of where you are. But there are some wheres that are harder to get out of than others. This is the drug-taking problem for adults. Teenage Weltscbmerz is easy to escape. But what drug will get a grown-up out of, for instance, debt?”

— P.J. O'Rourke

256. “People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it’s simply a measurement.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

257. “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

258. “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

259. “The young are adept at learning, but even more adept at avoiding it.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

260. “Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

262. “There’s not a woman in the book, the plot hinges on unkindness to animals, and the black characters mostly drown by Chapter 29.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

263. “The Australian language is easier to learn than boat talk. It has a vocabulary of about six words.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

264. “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

265. “The wonder is that communism lasted so long. But then again, modern poetry lasted a long time, too.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

266. “A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative. Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

267. “One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

268. “If you spend seventy-two hours in a place you’ve never been, talking to people whose language you don’t speak about social, political, and economic complexities you don’t understand, and you come back as the world’s biggest know-it-all, you’re a reporter.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

269. “Industrialization came to England but has since left.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

270. “That doesn’t mean that you should just sit back and just let accidents happen to you. No, you have to go out and cause them yourself. That way you’re in control of the situation.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

271. “The day was warm and clear. Kids were playing soccer in the parking lots and women were sunning their babies and having their tea all over the lawns. The scene was entirely too cheery for journalism.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

272. “We won’t dispassionately investigate or rationally debate which drugs do what damage and whether or how much of that damage is the result of criminalization. We’d rather work ourselves into a screaming fit of puritanism and then go home and take a pill.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

273. “Vegetables are something God invented to let women get even with their children.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

274. “Jesse Jackson was spending time with his family, or families.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

276. “Visiting Future World is like opening a Chinese fortune cookie to read, “Soon you’ll be finished with dinner.””

— P.J. O'Rourke

277. “My Grandmother wouldn’t even speak the word Democrat if there were children in the room, she’d say Bastards instead.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

278. “Fortunately, I’m married to someone who’s a pretty excellent parent!”

— P.J. O'Rourke

279. “You don’t despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

280. “Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, rioted over much needed spelling reform in the Soviet Union.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

281. “Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

282. “Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. They are, literally, selfless. A world designed for automobiles instead of people would have wider streets, larger dining rooms, fewer stairs to climb and no smelly, dangerous subway stations.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

283. “Good manners consist of doing precisely what everyone thinks should be done, especially when no one knows quite what that is.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

284. “Journalists aren’t supposed to praise things. It’s a violation of work rules almost as serious as buying drinks with our own money or absolving the CIA of something.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

285. “Germans respond well to lies. At least, they always have historically.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

286. “Humor is a terrific tool for explaining things, especially when what you’re explaining is frightening or dull and complicated.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

287. “Then there was LSD, which was supposed to make you think you could fly. I remember it made you think you couldn’t stand up, and mostly it was right.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

288. “The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

289. “Politicians are wonderful people as longa as they stay away from things they don’t understand, such as working for a living.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

290. “Australia is not very exclusive. On the visa application they still ask if you’ve been convicted of a felony – although they are willing to give you a visa even if you haven’t been.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

291. “Who, other than a crazy person, does anything besides hang up on a robo-call? Any call, any person, anywhere, under any circumstances.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

292. “I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a ‘learning experience.’ Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I’ve done as a ‘learning experience.’ It makes me feel less stupid.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

293. “The American political system is like fast food – mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of things and everybody wants some.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

294. “I’m old enough to remember when the air over American cities was a lot dirtier than it is now.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

295. “Haitians weren’t screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

296. “Rich parents are famous both for miserliness and astonishing longevity. And, when they finally do die, you’ll find they’ve left their estate in inviolate trust to the golden retrievers.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

297. “In the Third World, honk your horn only under the following circumstances: 1. When anything blocks the road. 2. When anything doesn’t. 3. When anything might. 4. At red lights. 5. At green lights. 6. At all other times.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

298. “Modern air travel means less time spent in transit. That time is now spent in transit lounges.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

299. “Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

300. “One thing talk can’t accomplish is communication. This is because everybody’s talking too much to pay attention to what anyone is saying.”

— P.J. O'Rourke