P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

384 Sourced Quotes

The Democrats planned to fiddle while Rome burned. The Republicans were going to burn Rome, then fiddle.

P. J. O'Rourke
Fashionably amusing table manners are a matter of breaking the right rule at the right time.

P. J. O'Rourke
The Arab peoples possess an ancient and highly developed civilization that is in many ways more sophisticated than our own. For instance, they invented algebra. And this is why we have to go to war with Saddam Hussein this minute and bomb the shish kebab out of him before he invents trig and chemistry and the whole of America flunks high school.

P. J. O'Rourke
I'm a member of the working press; you'd think I'd know better than to listen to journalists.

P. J. O'Rourke
Vegetables are something God invented to let women get even with their children.

P. J. O'Rourke
At Epcot Center the Disney corporation has focused its attention on two things greatly in need of Disneyfication: the tedious future and the annoying whole wide world.

P. J. O'Rourke
A girl who is really pretty - whether she wraps herself in an abayah, a nun's habit, or the front hall rug - never wraps herself so that the world can't tell.

P. J. O'Rourke
Generally it's not a good idea to wear Banana Republic - type khaki journalist clothes in a war zone. You might look too much like something that's supposed to be shot, such as a journalist.

P. J. O'Rourke
Taxi drivers all over the world, by the way, are under Newspaper Guild contract to give easy quotes to foreign correspondents.

P. J. O'Rourke
A cocktail party is what you call it when you invite everyone you know to come over to your house at six p.m., put cigarettes out on your rug, and leave at eight to go somewhere more interesting for dinner without inviting you.

P. J. O'Rourke
Maybe a vague president and an incompetent and somewhat corrupt administration is what the nation needs.

P. J. O'Rourke
A politician who commends himself as 'caring' and 'sensitive' because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to do good with other peoples' money.

P. J. O'Rourke
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
I suspect the soviets never did want to use those bombs. The most Stalinist of Soviet hard-liners - Stalin, for example - must have realized a nuclear war would be a hard thing to clean up after.

P. J. O'Rourke
The Constitution is an equally forthright piece of work and quite succinct... giving the complete operating instructions for a nation of 250 million people. The manual for a Toyota Camry, which only seats five, is four times as long.

P. J. O'Rourke
America is not a wily, sneaky nation. We don't think that way. We don't think much at all, thank God. Start thinking and pretty soon you get ideas, and then you get idealism, and the next thing you know you've got ideology, with millions dead in concentration camps and gulags.

P. J. O'Rourke
Australia is not very exclusive. On the visa application they still ask if you've been convicted of a felony - although they are willing to give you a visa even if you haven't been.

P. J. O'Rourke
Cats are to dogs what modern people are to the people we used to have. Cats are slimmer, cleaner, more attractive, disloyal, and lazy. It's easy to understand why the cat has eclipsed the dog as modern America's favorite poet. People like poets to possess the same qualities they do.

P. J. O'Rourke
Never do anything to a clitoris with your teeth that you wouldn't do to an expensive waterproof wristwatch.

P. J. O'Rourke
I don't think I'll ever be a real boat reporter. My Rolex isn't big enough.

P. J. O'Rourke
There's nothing more oily and cynical in politics than telling the truth.

P. J. O'Rourke
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
What about snipers?" I once asked someone. He said, "Oh, most of the snipers have automatic weapon. They arent very accurate.

P. J. O'Rourke
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
The motorcycle is a device created by the team of God and Darwin to rid the world of useless young males.

P. J. O'Rourke
Wearing a hat implies that you are bald if you are a man and that your hair is dirty if you are a woman.

P. J. O'Rourke
I was told to hand over my disposable lighter, to prevent, I suppose, any threat of "Do what I say or I'll light this Marlboro and you'll all die - in thirty years due to inhalation of secondhand smoke."

P. J. O'Rourke
I suppose I should get a VCR, but the only thing I like about television is its ephemerality.

P. J. O'Rourke
Men generally pay for all expenses on a date... either sex, however, may bring a little gift, its value to be determined by the bizarrness of the sexual request to be made later that evening.

P. J. O'Rourke
One of the reporters must have flunked journalism school because he asked a question that went straight to the point.

P. J. O'Rourke