P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

384 Sourced Quotes

Crowded as the country is, is overcrowding even its main problem? Hong Kong and Singapore both have greater population densities (14.315 and 12.347 per square mile, respectively) than Bangladesh, and they're called success stories. The same goes for Monaco. In fact, the whole Riviera is packed in August, and neither Malthus nor Ehrlich have complained about the topless beaches of St. Tropez.

P. J. O'Rourke
Stay away from girls who cry a lot or who look like they get pregnant easily or have careers.

P. J. O'Rourke
Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming.

P. J. O'Rourke
You can always reason with a German. You can always reason with a barnyard animal, too, for all the good it does.

P. J. O'Rourke
Saigon is like all the other great modern cities of the world. It's the mess left over from people getting rich.

P. J. O'Rourke
Zen martini: A martini with no vermouth at all. And no gin, either.

P. J. O'Rourke
When are the world's political parties going to get appropriate symbols: snake, louse, jackal,... trash can, clown face,... dollar bill with bat wings on it?

P. J. O'Rourke
At the core of liberalism is the spoiled child — miserable, as all spoiled children are, unsatisfied, demanding, ill-disciplined, despotic and useless. Liberalism is a philosophy of sniveling brats.

P. J. O'Rourke
A fruit is a vegetable with looks and money. Plus, if you let fruit rot, it turns into wine, something Brussels sprouts never do.

P. J. O'Rourke
We had a choice between Democrats who couldn't learn from the past and Republicans who couldn't stop living in it...

P. J. O'Rourke
The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it. The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.

P. J. O'Rourke
The people who believe that, as a result of industrial development, life is about to become a hell, or may be one already, are guilty, at least, of sloppy pronouncements. On page 8 of Earth in the Balance, Al Gore claims that his study of the arms race gave him "a deeper appreciation for the most horrifying fact in all our lives: civilization is now capable of destroying itself." In the first place, the most horrifying fact in many of our lives is that our ex-spouse has gotten ahold of our ATM card. And civilization has always been able to destroy itself. The Greeks of ancient Athens, who had a civilization remarkable for lack of technological progress during its period of greatest knowledge and power, managed to destroy them fine.

P. J. O'Rourke
These were people who believed everything about the Soviet Union was perfect, but they were bringing their own toilet paper.

P. J. O'Rourke
Biotechnology is a worry. What if they take genetic material from wet noodles and blowfish and splice it into politician chromosomes and create a Clinton administration?

P. J. O'Rourke
Smoking cigarettes seems to alarm peace activists much more than voting for Reagan does.

P. J. O'Rourke
Women are successful in the business world because the business world was created by men. Men are babies. And women areGood With Kids.

P. J. O'Rourke
Traffic was like a bad dog. It wasn't important to look both ways when crossing the street; it was important to not show fear.

P. J. O'Rourke
It is a popular delusion that the government wastes vast amounts of money through inefficiency and sloth. Enormous effort and elaborate planning are required to waste this much money.

P. J. O'Rourke
Keeping house is as unpleasant and filthy as coal mining, and the pay's a lot worse.

P. J. O'Rourke
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.

P. J. O'Rourke
The great thing about starting golf in your forties is that you can start golf in your forties. You can start other things in your forties but generally your wife makes you stop them, as Bill Clinton found out.

P. J. O'Rourke
Government does not cause affluence. Citizens of totalitarian countries have plenty of government and nothing of anything else.

P. J. O'Rourke
In the American political system, you're only allowed to have real ideas if it's absolutely guaranteed that you can't win an election

P. J. O'Rourke
East Germany was so total in its totalitarianism that everything was banned which wasn't compulsory.

P. J. O'Rourke
The Chinese had gunpowder, but it didn't occur to them to put it in a gun. They possessed the compass but didn't go anywhere. They invented paper, printing, and a written form of their language, but hardly anyone in China was taught to read.

P. J. O'Rourke
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
Each American embassy comes with two permanent features - a giant anti-American demonstration and a giant line for American visas. Most demonstrators spend half their time burning Old Glory and the other half waiting for green cards.

P. J. O'Rourke
Imagine having journalists in your own home and not even covering the furniture with plastic sheets first.

P. J. O'Rourke
We have no one to blame for the Kennedys but ourselves. We took the Kennedys to heart of our own accord. And it is my opinion that we did it not because we respected them or thought what they proposed was good, but because they were pretty. We, the electorate, were smitten by this handsome, vivacious family.... We wanted to hug their golden tousled heads to our dumpy breasts.

P. J. O'Rourke
The very existence of the bicycle is an offense to reason and wisdom.

P. J. O'Rourke