Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2024 Update)
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251. “We need a government, alas, because of the nature of humans.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

253. “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

254. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

260. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

263. “The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

264. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

267. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

269. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

271. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

273. “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

274. “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

275. “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

276. “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

277. “The problem isn’t a Congress that won’t cut spending or a president who won’t raise taxes. The problem is an American public with a bottomless sense of entitlement to federal money.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

278. “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

279. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

281. “For toddlers I suggest leaving their mittens on year-round, indoors and out. That way they can’t get into aspirin bottles, liquor cabinets, or boxes of kitchen matches.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

282. “Creative writing teachers should be purged until every last instructor who has uttered the words ‘Write what you know’ is confined to a labor camp. Please, talented scribblers, write what you don’t. The blind guy with the funny little harp who composed The Iliad, how much combat do you think he saw?”

— P.J. O'Rourke

283. “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

284. “There’s nothing more oily and cynical in politics than telling the truth.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

286. “The body is forever teaching us lessons. There are all sorts of things that we can’t do, shouldn’t do, had better not do very often or do for too long as we get older. The body makes its presence known.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

287. “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

288. “It is a law of governance that democracies have to spend themselves dizzy. Citizens of democracies can, after all, tell their government to give them things.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

289. “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

290. “What use is it to endure the Dutch Rubs and Indian Rope Burns that are politics if you can’t obtain mastery over people and give them noogies back?”

— 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. “You can smoke or drink on a golf course without interrupting the game, and you can take a leak – something you can’t do on a squash court and shouldn’t do in a swimming pool.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

293. “One of these suburbs is actually named Stalingrad, which goes to show that the French have learned nothing about politics since they guillotined all the smart people in 1793.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

294. “There are artists with palettes and easels selling the kind of modern art that Soviet art critics used to critique with bulldozers. Judging by the paintings I saw, the Soviets were right the first time.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

295. “Humor is, by its nature, more truthful than factual.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

296. “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

297. “The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

298. “I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

299. “Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke