Top 400 P.J. O'Rourke Quotes (2026 Update)
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301. “Humor is, by its nature, more truthful than factual.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

302. “That is the really great thing about being an adult male, once you get married and have children the whole decision-making process is taken out of your hands, and I for one am extremely grateful.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

303. “Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

304. “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

305. “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

306. “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

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

308. “Satire doesn’t effect change.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

309. “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

310. “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

311. “If Disney still wants to make Epcot Center futuristic, they could do so by blowing the place up with an atom bomb.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

312. “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

313. “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

314. “I have, of all the inglorious things, a malignant hemorrhoid. What color bracelet does one wear for that? And where does one wear it? And what slogan is apropos? Perhaps that slogan can be sewn in needlepoint around the ruffle on a cover for my embarrassing little doughnut buttocks pillow.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

315. “Satan probably wouldn’t have talked so big if God had been his wife.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

316. “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

317. “Because of their cuisine, Germans don’t consider farting rude. They’d certainly be out of luck if they did.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

318. “Rich white Protestant men have held on to some measure of power in America almost solely by getting women, blacks, and other disadvantaged groups to wear crippling foot fashions. This keeps them too busy with corns and bunions to compete in the job market.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

319. “The average IQ in America is – and this can be proven mathematically – average.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

320. “In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is government services. What I pay are my taxes.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

321. “Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

322. “I’ve been a New Yorker for ten years, and the only people who are nice to us turn out to be Moonies.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

323. “I’ve always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He’d have given us bigger behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

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

— P.J. O'Rourke

325. “Imagine a weight-loss program at the end of which, instead of better health, good looks, and hot romantic prospects, you die. Somalia had become just this kind of spa.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

326. “Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they’ve got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

327. “How much fame, money and power does a woman have to achieve on her own before you can punch her in the face?”

— P.J. O'Rourke

328. “This is the most elaborate and luxurious method of convincing others that you can cook. Take everybody out on your yacht until they’re green in the face. Then you can rave for weeks about your sauce marinara and no one will gainsay you...”

— P.J. O'Rourke

329. “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

330. “That happy sense of purpose people have when standing up for a principle they haven’t really been knocked down for yet.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

331. “No government proposal more complicated than “This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private” ever works.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

332. “I rarely meet a politician that I don’t like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

333. “Humans have trouble with economics, as you may have noticed, and not just because economic circumstances sometimes cause them to starve. Humans seem to have an innate inability to pay attention to economic principles.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

334. “When a couple decides to divorce, they should inform both sets of parents before having a party and telling all their friends. This is not only courteous but practical. Parents may be very willing to pitch in with comments, criticism, and malicious gossip of their own to help the divorce along.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

335. “The only time a bachelor’s bed is made is when it’s in the factory.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

336. “People are always angry at America. They’re absolutely certain that America either caused their problems or is deliberately not fixing their problems. But the anger is always directed at America and never at Americans.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

337. “Nothing bad is going to happen to us. If we get fired, it’s not failure; its a midlife vocational reassessment.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

338. “The Italians have had 2,000 years to fix up the Forum and just look at the place!”

— P.J. O'Rourke

339. “Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

340. “Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

341. “The sky was so clear that the starlight cast shadows, and so many sparkles and glitters and glints appeared above us that it looked like something really expensive had been dropped and shattered in heaven – God’s Steuben ashtray, maybe.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

342. “Anyone who thinks he has a better idea of what’s good for people than people do is a swine.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

343. “I’m here as a radio journalist but am not even sure which part of a tape recorder takes the pictures.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

344. “These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

345. “Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

346. “Only one way to cover a story like this, and make that a double, bartender, please.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

347. “I’m a political conservative.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

348. “Soldiers are not policemen, and it’s very unfair, even for those soldiers who have some police training, to burden them with police duties. It’s not what they’re trained for, or equipped for.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

349. “Liberal institutions straightway cease from being liberal the moment they are soundly established: once this is attained no more grievous and more thorough enemies of freedom exist than liberal institutions.”

— P.J. O'Rourke

350. “I try to ONLY ridicule people who’s efforts are sincere. Very little trouble has been caused in the world by insincere efforts. An occasional seduction maybe. There were very few insincere Stalinists or Nazis.”

— P.J. O'Rourke