Maybe a nation that consumes as much booze and dope as we do and has our kind of divorce statistics should pipe down about “character issues.” Either that or just go ahead and determine the presidency with three-legged races and pie-eating contests. It would make better TV.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Elections, Voting
The principle feature of American liberalism is sanctimoniousness. By loudly denouncing all bad things—war and hunger and date rape—liberals testify to their own terrific goodness. More important, they promote themselves to membership in a self-selecting elite of those who care deeply about such things. It’s a kind of natural aristocracy, and the wonderful thing about this aristocracy is that you don’t have to be brave, smart, strong or even lucky to join it, you just have to be liberal.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Liberalism
A little government and a little luck are necessary in life, but only a fool trusts either of them
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Government
You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where they’re going.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Funny quotes, Children
In our brief national history we have shot four of our presidents, worried five of them to death, impeached one and hounded another out of office. And when all else fails, we hold an election and assassinate their character.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Presidency
One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Responsibility
The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Government
Authority has always attracted the lowest elements in the human race. All through history mankind has been bullied by scum. Those who lord it over their fellows and toss commands in every direction and would boss the grass in the meadow about which way to bend in the wind are the most depraved kind of prostitutes. They will submit to any indignity, perform any vile act, do anything to achieve power. The worst off-sloughings of the planet are the ingredients of sovereignty. Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy the whores are us.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Authority, Democracy, Government
No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the sources of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Drugs
There are no kinder or better people in the world than those who listen to you when you’re 18.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Farm policy, although it’s complex, can be explained. What it can’t be is believed. No cheating spouse, no teen with a wrecked family car, no mayor of Washington, D.C., videotaped in flagrant has ever come up with anything as farfetched as U.S. farm policy.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Farming
Never fight an inanimate object.
—P. J. O’Rourke
There’s no telling what might have happened to our defense budget if Saddam Hussein hadn’t invaded Kuwait that August and set everyone gearing up for World War II. Can we count on Saddam Hussein to come along every year and resolve our defense-policy debates? Given the history of the Middle East, it’s possible.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Security, Defense
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.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Social Security is a government program with a constituency made up of the old, the near old and those who hope or fear to grow old. After 215 years of trying, we have finally discovered a special interest that includes 100 percent of the population. Now we can vote ourselves rich.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Welfare
People are all exactly alike. There’s no such thing as a race and barely such a thing as an ethnic group. If we were dogs, we’d be the same breed. George Bush and an Australian Aborigine have fewer differences than a Lhasa apso and a toy fox terrier. A Japanese raised in Riyadh would be an Arab. A Zulu raised in New Rochelle would be an orthodontist. People are all the same, though their circumstances differ terribly.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: People
You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Poverty, Giving, The Poor
Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom with the dishes.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Motherhood
Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Books, Reading
Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Identity, Stupidity
Traffic is like a bad dog. It isn’t important to look both ways when crossing the street. It’s important to not show fear.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Fear
Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don’t need any of those things.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Manners
Our democracy, our culture, our whole way of life is a spectacular triumph of the blah. Why not have a political convention without politics to nominate a leader who’s out in front of nobody? Maybe our national mindlessness is the very thing that keeps us from turning into one of those smelly European countries full of pseudo-reds and crypto-fascists and greens who dress like forest elves.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: America
Newsmen believe that news is a tacitly acknowledged fourth branch of the federal system. This is why most news about government sounds as if it were federally mandated—serious, bulky and blandly worthwhile, like a high-fiber diet set in type.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: News
Even a band of angels can turn ugly and start looting if enough angels are unemployed and hanging around the Pearly Gates convinced that all the succubi own all the liquor stores in Heaven.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Angels
Automobiles are free of egotism, passion, prejudice and stupid ideas about where to have dinner. They are, literally, selfless. A world designed for automobiles instead of people would have wider streets, larger dining rooms, fewer stairs to climb and no smelly, dangerous subway stations.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Government
Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Bureaucracy
If government were a product, selling it would be illegal
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Government, One liners
Some people are better imagined in one’s bed than found there in the morning.
—P. J. O’Rourke
Topics: Sex
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Will Rogers American Humorist, Actor
- H. L. Mencken American Journalist, Literary Critic
- George Carlin American Comedian
- Bill Maher American Comedian, TV Host
- Scott Adams American Cartoonist
- Joan Rivers American Entertainer
- Garrison Keillor American Broadcaster, Writer
- Russell Baker American Journalist, Humorist
- Gamaliel Bailey American Journalist
- Robert A. Heinlein American Science Fiction Writer
Leave a Reply