P.J. O'Rourke Quotes

Where self-interest is violently suppressed, it is replaced by a burdensome system of bureaucratic control which dries up the wellsprings of initiative and creativity.

This country was founded by religious nuts with guns.

The purpose of the Senate is to keep 100 middle aged knuckleheads out of the private sector where they can do real harm.

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present.

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

Each child is biologically required to have a mother. Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.

The interesting thing about staring down a gun barrel is how small the hole is where the bullet comes out, yet what a big difference it would make in your social schedule.

I couldn't have gotten into Harvard with a crowbar.

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights. Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

A death from a long illness is very different from a sudden death. It gives you time to say goodbye and time to adjust to the idea that the beloved will not be with you anymore.

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

Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise.

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

You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity.

Thanksgiving is so called because we are all so thankful that it only comes once a year.

The people we most love do become a physical part of us, ingrained in our synapses, in the pathways where memories are created.

Harvard has been almost as important to the American Jewish community as the pork-sausage industry.

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

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.

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

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.

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

Hollywood's famous for putting you in a box.

Some women want the strong silent type, so they can tell him to shut up and rearrange the furniture.

When politics are used to allocate resources, the resources all end up being allocated to politics.

Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.

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

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

Evan Rachel Wood is the best actress I've ever worked with, hands down.

Popular culture has become engorged, broadening and thickening until it's the only culture anyone notices.

I bought my first house because of Animal House.

Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don't need any of those things.

In the past a man was expected to give his seat on a bus to a woman. Today it would be much more courteous for that man to give her his job.

I covered the Lebanese civil war. I could see a place that had once been prosperous and now was impoverished. I'm not seeing that in America.

Crazy old people are our entire source of polling information.

Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

Regret is an odd emotion because it comes only upon reflection. Regret lacks immediacy, and so its power seldom influences events when it could do some good.

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

The typical old-fashioned diet (in the nineteenth century) was so bad it almost assembled modern dieting.

There's one more terrifying fact about old people: I'm going to be one soon.

Liberals have a quaint and touching faith that truth is on their side and an even quainter faith that journalists are on the side of truth.

Lust, Pride, Sloth, and Gluttony, or, as we call them these days, "getting in touch with your sexuality," "raising your self-esteem," "relaxation therapy," and "being a recovered bulimic."

I didn't see any NRA officials killing babies in Waco.

Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.

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.

Good manners can replace morals. It may be years before anyone knows if what you are doing is right. But if what you are doing is nice, it will be immediately evident.

Visiting Future World is like opening a Chinese fortune cookie to read, "Soon you'll be finished with dinner."

There's something about Marxism that brings out warts; the only kind of growth this economic system encourages.

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

Of course, the humans in Haiti have hope. They hope to leave.