P.j. O Rourke Quotes

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

Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

No drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

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.

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

If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

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

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.

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

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

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

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

Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system

The weirder you're going to behave, the more normal you should look. It works in reverse, too. When I see a kid with three or four rings in his nose, I know there is absolutely nothing extraordinary about that person.

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

Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. It's not entitlement. An entitlement is what people on welfare get, and how free are they? It's not an endlessly expanding list of rights -- the "right" to education, the "right" to food and housing. That's not freedom, that's dependency. Those aren't rights, those are the rations of slavery -- hay and a barn for human cattle. There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.

The free market is ugly and stupid, like going to the mall; the unfree market is just as ugly and just as stupid, except there is nothing in the mall and if you don't go there they shoot you.

Wherever there's injustice, oppression, and suffering, America will show up six months late and bomb the country next to where it's happening.

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

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

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.

It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money.

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?

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

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

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

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.

I like to think of my behavior in the sixties as a "learning experience." Then again, I like to think of anything stupid I've done as a "learning experience." It makes me feel less stupid.

Guns are always the best method for a private suicide. They are more stylish looking than single-edged razor blades and natural gas has got so expensive. Drugs are too chancy. You might miscalculate the dosage and just have a good time.

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 pet. People like pets to possess the same qualities they do. Cats are irresponsible and recognize no authority, yet are completely dependent on others for their material needs. Cats cannot be made to do anything useful. Cats are mean for the fun of it. In fact, cats possess so many of the same qualities as some people (expensive girlfriends, for instance) that it's often hard to tell the people and the cats apart.

No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal

There are no kinder or better people in the world than those who listen to you when you are 18.

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.

There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.

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

Microeconomics is about money you don't have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.

The second item in the liberal creed, after self-righteousness, is unaccountability. Liberals have invented whole college majors--psychology, sociology, women's studies--to prove that nothing is anybody's fault. No one is fond of taking responsibility for his actions, but consider how much you'd have to hate free will to come up with a political platform that advocates killing unborn babies but not convicted murderers. A callous pragmatist might favor abortion and capital punishment. A devout Christian would sanction neither. But it takes years of therapy to arrive at the liberal view.

The Clinton administration launched an attack on people in Texas because those people were religious nuts with guns. Hell, this country was founded by religious nuts with guns. Who does Bill Clinton think stepped ashore on Plymouth Rock?

The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world.

Smoking crack is a way for people who couldn't afford college to study the works of Charles Darwin.

Even very young children need to be informed about dying. Explain the concept of death very carefully to your child. This will make threatening him with it much more effective.

Politicians are wonderful people as longa as they stay away from things they don't understand, such as working for a living.

The proper behaviour all through the holiday season is to be drunk. The drunkenness culminates on New Years’ Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you’re married to.

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

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.

Veal is a very young beef and, like a very young girlfriend, it's cute but boring and expensive.

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

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we're looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn't test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

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.

There is no virtue in compulsory government charity, and there is no virtue in advocating it. A politician who portrays himself as "caring" and "sensitive" because he wants to expand the government's charitable programs is merely saying that he's willing to try to do good with other people's money. Well, who isn't? And a voter who takes pride in supporting such programs is telling us that he'll do good with his own money—if a gun is held to his head.

The sternest commissar and the wildest hippie both share the same daydream: that a thing can be worth other than people are willing to give for it.

Sucking the fun out of life has always been an important component of politics.

Politicians are interested in people. Not that it is always a virtue. Fleas are interested in dogs.

Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.

Staying married may have long-term benefits. You can elicit much more sympathy from friends over a bad marriage than you ever can from a good divorce.

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

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

Never fight an inanimate object.

We all know how 'modern democracies take loaves from the wealthy.' It's the slipups in the 'pass them out to the poor' department that inspire a study of Economics.

The whole idea of government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert, they can take something and not pay for it.

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

God created a free universe. He could have created any kind of universe he wanted. But a universe without freedom would have been static and meaningless -- the taxpayer-funded-art-in-public-places universe.

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.

When Adam Smith was being incomprehensible he didn’t have the luxury of brief, snappy technical terms as a shorthand for incoherence.

The world is going to hell. All we can do is look good on the trip.

The web is just a device by which bad ideas travel around the globe at the speed of light.

Everyone with any sense and experience in life would rather take his fellows one by one than in a crowd. Crowds are noisy, unreasonable and impatient. They can trample you easier than a single person can. And a crowd will never buy you lunch.

Whenever I'm in the middle of conformity, surrounded by oneness of mind with people oozing concurrence on every side, I get scared. And when I find myself agreeing with everybody, too, I get terrified.

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

Wealth makes materialism easier to bear.

W is for Women. They're awful, mendacious, Nasty and selfish, cruel and salacious, As thievish as gypsies, more crazy than Celts. Be sure that you never fuck anything else.

When someone detonates a suicide bomb, that person does not have career prospects.

A walk through an old graveyard shows our ancestors often had more dead children than we have live ones.

Schneider has made a career of telling the public that the climate is going to change drastically, and indeed every spring and fall he's been right.

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

Politics is the business of getting power and privilege without possessing merit. A politician is anyone who asks individuals to surrender part of their liberty - their power and privilege - to State, Masses, Mankind, Planet Earth, or whatever. This state, those masses, that mankind, and the planet will then be run by . . . politicians.

Being gloomy is easier than being cheerful. Anybody can say "I've got cancer" and get a rise out of a crowd. But how many of us can do five minutes of good stand-up comedy? And worrying is less work than doing something to fix the worry. This is especially true if we're careful to pick the biggest possible problems to worry about. Everybody wants to save the earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.

I have been told by the third grade teacher that my daughter Poppet is reading at middle school level. Yet if I leave Poppet a note in block letters telling her to feed the dogs I will come home to find the dogs have been ... given a swim in the above-ground pool, dressed in tutus, provided with hair weaves. What I will not find is that the dogs have been fed. 'I thought you wanted me to free the dogs,' says Poppet whose school district is not spending quite what D.C.'s is, thanks to voter rejection of the last school bond referendum.

Nature will get rights as soon as it gets duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.

Liberal" is one of those fine English words, like "lady" "gay" or "welfare" that have been spoiled by special pleading. So by "liberal I certainly don't mean tolerant or open-handed people or even big-government Democrats. I mean anyone who is excited that 1% of Ben and Jerry's profits go to promote world peace.

We got over feminism, too. At least women did, as soon as they were hired for those high-prestige jobs that only men used to have. It turns out that work sucks.

No, everything will not be all right if we just talk it over, face facts, use our noodles.

Moscow has changed. I was here in 1982, during the Brezhnev twilight, and things are better now. For instance, they've got litter. In 1982 there was nothing to litter with.

You can't get good Chinese takeout in China and Cuban cigars are rationed in Cuba. That's all you need to know about communism.

Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government do it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

We are endowed with a moral capacity that animals, plants, rocks-and many fervent ecologists-lack. We should not be dirty, wasteful or cruel. To do so harms others. That's wrong. Therefore we don't disembowel Bambi like the way coyotes do, we shoot him first.

The principal 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.

The Affordable Health Care for Americans Act, passed by the House of Representatives on November 7, 2009, was 1,990 pages long. You could stand on it to paint the ceiling. The entire U.S. Constitution can be printed on eight pages. That's eight pages to run a whole country for 221 years versus four reams of government pig latin if you slam your thumb in a car door.

Collectivism doesn't work because it's based on a faulty economic premise. There is no such thing as a person's fair share of wealth. The gross national product is not a pizza that must be carefully divided because if I get too many slices, you have to eat the box. The economy is expandable and, in any practical sense, limitless.

It’s important to understand that in the Third World most driving is done with the horn, or “Egyptian Brake Pedal,” as it is known. There is a precise and complicated etiquette of horn use. Honk your horn only under the following circumstances: 1. When anything blocks the road 2. When anything doesn’t. 3. When anything might. 4. At red lights 5. At green lights. 6. At all other times.

(If it’s any comfort, we should remind ourselves of the purpose of voting. We don’t vote to elect great persons to office. They’re not that great. We vote to throw the bastards out.)

The bullying of citizens by means of dreads and fights has been going on since paleolithic times. Greenpeace fund-raisers on the subject of global warming are not much different than the tribal Wizards on the subject of lunar eclipses. 'Oh no, Night Wolf is eating the Moon Virgin. Give me silver and I will make him spit her out.

If there’s something we want, politics shouldn’t be our first resort. Politics is all taking, no making. Whatever politics provides for us will be obtained from other people. Those people won’t love us.

What's important about morality in politics is us. We own the chicken farm. We must give our bird-brained, feather-headed politicians morals. Politicians love to think of themselves as "free-range" but they do not have the capacity to hunt or gather morals in the wild. If we fail to supply them with morality, politicians begin to act very scary in the barnyard. These are enormous headless chickens and they have nukes.

I was having dinner…in London…when eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about “Your country’s never been invaded.” And so I said, “Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying 'Cheerio.' Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.

The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That’s all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can’t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165.

What I believed in the Sixties: Everything. You name it. What I believe now: Nothing. Well, nothing much. Like, things that can be proven by reason and by experiment, and believe you me I want to see the logic and the lab equipment.

The free market is not a creed or an ideology that political conservatives, libertarians, and Ayn Rand acolytes want Americans to take on faith. The free market is simply a measurement. The free market tells us what people are willing to pay for a given thing at a given moment. That’s all the free market does. The free market is a bathroom scale. We may not like what we see when we step on the bathroom scale, but we can’t pass a law making ourselves weigh 165. Liberals and leftists think we can.

There's a joke people tell in the Soviet Union: Mitterrand, Bush and Gorbachev have a meeting with God. Mitterrand says, 'My country faces many difficult problems-- lagging exports, Muslim minorities, European unification. How long will it be before France's problems are solved?' God says, 'Fifteen years.' Mitterrand begins to cry. 'I'm an old man,' says Mitterrand. 'I'll be dead by then. I'll never see France's problems solved.' Then Bush says, 'My country faces many difficult problems-- recession, crime, racial prejudice. How long will it be before America's problems are solved?' God says, 'Ten years.' Bush begins to cry. 'I'm an old man,' says Bush. 'I'll be out of office by then. I won't get any credit for solving America's problems.' Then Gorbachev says, 'My country faces many, many difficult problems. How long will it be before the Soviet Union's problems are solved?' God begins to cry.