P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Considering what a hot, wed dog smells like, dog stew has a surprisingly savory odor To tell the tru...

Americans appreciate bad taste or America wouldn’t look the way America does.

It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and s...

A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove t...

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove t...

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it t...

I just wasn't cut out to be a Chinese Tiger Mom. I'm more of an Irish Setter Dad.

To mistrust science and deny the validity of scientific method is to resign your job as a human. You...

I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements.

The Hollywooden heads would buy a car for almost any purpose except a worthy one. Many automobiles w...

Medical researchers don't know much about head lice because they don't much care. The reason that th...

Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history...

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

The killjoys initiated automobile crash standards so rigorous that we can't buy a car that hasn't be...

Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies, the green grazing in th...

There is the love and marriage and family kind of happiness, which is exceedingly boring to describe...

We all know how 'modern democracies take loaves from the wealthy.' It's the slipups in the 'pass the...

I was having dinner…in London…when eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about ...

Political pundits are under professional obligation to regard the obvious as being too obvious.

Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiv...

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a b...

You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to t...

Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.

The average IQ in America is—and this can be proven mathematically—average.

The American political system is like fast food--mushy, insipid, made out of disgusting parts of thi...

There's a love of rhetorical skill in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden doesn't just go on tape cass...

One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I...

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When ...

There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the ...

People are all exactly alike. There's no such thing as a race and barely such a thing as an ethnic g...

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

We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop...

The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The ...

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal particularly in women. Chief...

Cars let us out of the barn and, while they were at it, destroyed the American nuclear family. As an...

The problem, when comparing contemporary television to television in 1974, is that TV has become not...

In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, im...

Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.

Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it,...

When you pay a hospital bill, you're really paying two hospital bills - one bill for you because you...

If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

The First Amendment only says 'Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion.' ...

I'm too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom's earring in his tongu...

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

I spent a lot of time behind the Iron Curtain, and their cars were abysmal.

Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that...

Tel Aviv is new, built on the sand dunes north of Jaffa in the 1890s, about the same time Miami was ...

Space has always been confusing to politics.

The only advantage to being a middle-aged man is that when you put on a jacket and tie, you're the S...

A 'farm' today means 100,000 chickens in a space the size of a Motel 6 shower stall.

I grew up going to public school, and they were huge public schools. I went to a school that had 3,2...

Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the righ...

Being a humorist is not a voluntary thing. You can tell this because in a situation where saying a f...

All religions must be made child-proof. Our teachers' unions have done good work in this field, K th...

When I'm in the car, I want the only one shouting to be me.

Public schools helped create the idea of America and inculcate Americans with a few rudiments of kno...

Let's reintroduce corporal punishment in the schools - and use it on the teachers.

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are le...

Call a man 'ignorant,' and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise h...

I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a 'learning experience.' Then again, I like to thin...

Infant mortality and life expectancy are reasonable indicators of general well-being in a society.

My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't e...

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

If it were not for government regulation of big corporations, executives at companies like Enron, Wo...

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

The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for ...

The purpose of sports - even foreign sports - is not to bore people.

The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with ...

I like Michael Moore, but I think of him more as a rabble-rouser. On his TV show, when he went to th...

People are always angry at America. They're absolutely certain that America either caused their prob...

Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup hold...

Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial ...

Abstract anger is great for rhetorical carrying on. You can go on endlessly about the post office, b...

I think that humor has become a principle means of communication among Americans about politics.

I come from Toledo, Ohio, a town that has been hurt badly by the shift of the automobile business to...

I'm a member of the 1960s generation. We didn't have any wisdom.

Computers seem a little too adaptively flexible, like the strange natives, odd societies, and head c...

By the end of the 1950s, American cars were so reliable that their reliability went without saying e...

I think it's been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islami...

Don't send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their che...

The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.

If death weren't around to 'finalize' the Darwinian process, we'd all still be amoebas.

Never fight an inanimate object.

The problem with public school is not overcrowding in the classroom. The problem is not teacher unio...

Californians are people who insist on growing their own vegetables, but they won't dig up the pretty...

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit l...

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

It could be that all awful dictators are frustrated artists - Mao with his poetry and Mussolini with...

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

The whole idea of government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can tak...

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled...

There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change - or whatever the currently ...

Even I realized that money was to politicians what the eucalyptus tree is to koala bears: food, wate...