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P. J. O'Rourke Quotes
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Patrick Jake O'Rourke is an American political satirist and journalist. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute and is a regular correspondent for The Atlantic Monthly, The American Spectator, and The Weekly Standard, and frequent panelist on National Public Radio's game show Wait Wait... Don't Tell Me!. Since 2011, he has been a columnist at The Daily Beast.In the UK, he is known as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s. He is the author of 20 books, the best known of which are Holidays in Hell, a compilation of O'Rourke's articles as a free-lance foreign correspondent, All the Trouble in the World, an examination of current political concerns such as global warming and famine from a libertarian perspective.The Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994 states, "O'Rourke's original reporting, irreverent humor, and crackerjack writing makes for delectable reading. He never minces words or pulls his punches, whatever the subject." Wikipedia  

✵ 14. November 1947  •  Other names Patrick Jake O'Rourke, P. J. O´Rourke
P. J. O'Rourke photo
P. J. O'Rourke: 185 quotes20 likes

P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

“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.”

P. J. O'Rourke

Modern Manners (1983)

“If the politics of disease are to be understood, particularly in the dreadful countries where this understanding is most needed, then the politics of total collapse have to be understood first.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“I can understand why mankind hasn't given up war. During a war you get to drive tanks through the sides of buildings and shoot foreigners— two things that are usually frowned on during peacetime.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“What would be a road hazard anywhere else, in the Third World is probably the road.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“People with a mission to save the earth want the earth to seem worse than it is so their mission will look more important.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“In fact, safety has no place anywhere. Everything that's fun in life is dangerous. Horse races, for instance, are very dangerous. But attempt to design a safe horse and the result is a cow (an appalling animal to watch at the trotters.) And everything that isn't fun is dangerous too. It is impossible to be alive and safe.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

“And 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? Peace Corps volunteers? Or maybe the people in Texas were attacked because of child abuse. But, if child abuse was the issue, why didn't Janet Reno tear-gas Woody Allen?”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Liberty Manifesto (1993)

“Despite the fact that meat is made from dead animals, it shouldn't smell that way. Try this test for meat freshness: close your eyes and see if you can tell the pork chops from a gym locker.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

“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.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“We’re told cars are dangerous. It’s safer to drive through South Central Los Angeles than to walk there. We’re told cars are wasteful. Wasteful of what? Oil did a lot of good sitting in the ground for millions of years. We’re told cars should be replaced with mass transportation. But it’s hard to reach the drive-through window at McDonald’s from a speeding train. And we’re told cars cause pollution. A hundred years ago city streets were ankle deep in horse excrement. What kind of pollution do you want? Would you rather die of cancer at eighty or typhoid fever at nine?”

P. J. O'Rourke

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (1996)

“The forces of safety are afoot in the land. I, for one, believe it is a conspiracy— a conspiracy of Safety Nazis shouting "Sieg Health" and seeking to trammel freedom, liberty, and large noisy parties. The Safety Nazis advocate gun control, vigorous exercise, and health foods. The result can only be a disarmed, exhausted, and half-starved population ready to acquiesce to dictatorship of some kind.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

“The Third World attitude toward the United States is also easy to understand if you think of it in terms of adolescence. The citizens of the Third World are in a teenage muddle about us--full of envy, imitation, anger and blind puppy love. I have been held at gunpoint by a Shi'ite youth in West Beirut who told me in one breath that America was "pig Satan devil" and that he planned to go to dental school in Dearborn as soon as he got his green card. In Ulundi, in Zululand, I talked to a young man who, as usual, blamed apartheid on the United States. However, he had just visited the U. S. with a church group and also told me, "Everything is so wonderful there. The race relations are so good. And everyone is rich."”

P. J. O'Rourke book Give War a Chance

Just what part of America had he visited, I asked. "The South Side of Chicago," he said.
Give War a Chance (1992)

“To really enjoy drugs you've got to want to get out of where you are. But there are some wheres that are harder to get out of than others. This is the drug-taking problem for adults. Teenage weltschmerz is easy to escape. But what drug will get a grown-up out of, for instance, debt?”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

“You can't shame or humiliate modern celebrities. What used to be called shame and humiliation is now called publicity. And forget traditional character assassination; 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.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Give War a Chance

Give War a Chance (1992)

“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.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Liberty Manifesto (1993)

“Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad economic thinking.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Eat the Rich

Eat the Rich (1999)

“A careful reading of 50 Simple Things leaves you wondering whether you're going to die from environmental disaster or intellectual annoyance. Failing either, you can worry yourself to death.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“It takes a lot of weapons to do good works (as Richard the Lionhearted could have told us). And this is not just a Somali problem. We have poverty and deprivation in our own country. Try standing unarmed on a street corner in Compton handing out twenty-dollar bills and see how long you last.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Are we disheartened by the breakup of the family? Nobody who ever met my family is.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“When a government controls both the economic power of individuals and the coercive power of the state … This violates a fundamental rule of happy living: Never let the people with all the money and the people with all the guns be the same people.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Eat the Rich

Eat the Rich (1999)

“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

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Haitians weren't screwed-up, but everything political, intellectual, and material around them is.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Armenians and Azerbaijanis in Stepanakert, capital of the Nagorno-Karabakh autonomous region, rioted over much needed spelling reform in the Soviet Union.”

P. J. O'Rourke

Source: "Year in Review" in Rolling Stone (15 December 1988)

“There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who are richer than you; and burlesque, when you make fun of both while taking your clothes off.”

P. J. O'Rourke

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (2005)

“"Malthus,", says Vice President Al Gore in Earth in the Balance, "was right in predicting that the population would grow geometrically." Al, as the father of four children, should know.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“You can keep the dining room clean by eating in the kitchen.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

“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.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Fretting about overpopulation, is a perfect guilt-free— indeed, sanctimonious— way for "progressives" to be racists.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs. Splash! There goes Mark Foley!”

P. J. O'Rourke

"What's That Smell?" (23 October 2006)

“Worshiping the earth is more fun than going to church. It's also closer. We can just step off the sidewalk. And sometimes we can get impressionable members of the opposite sex to perform sacramental rites with us. "Every drop of water wasted is a drop less of a wild and scenic river, Jennifer. We'd better double up in the shower."”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“We tried to find the mayor. His secretary said he was at home. His wife said he was at the office. In Italy or France this would mean His Honor was having an affair. In Chabarovice it probably meant he'd run off to be a busboy in Stuttgart.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Keeping house is as unpleasant and filthy as coal mining, and the pay's a lot worse.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

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

P. J. O'Rourke

Peace Kills: America's Fun New Imperialism (2004)

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

P. J. O'Rourke

Age and Guile Beat Youth, Innocence, and a Bad Haircut (1996)

“Idealism is based on big ideas. And, as anybody who has ever been asked "What's the big idea?" knows, most big ideas are bad ones.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“There are probably more fact-finding tours of Nicaragua right now than there are facts— the country has shortages of practically everything.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Government subsidies can be critically analyzed according to a simple principle: You are smarter than the government, so when the government pays you to do something you wouldn't do on your own, it is almost always paying you to do something stupid.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Ecology is the science of everything. Nobody knows everything. Nobody even knows everything about any one thing. And most of us don't know much. Say it's ten-thirty on a Saturday night. Where are your teenage children? I didn't ask where they said they were going. Where are they really? What are they doing? Who are they with? Have you met the other kids' families? And what is tonight's pot smoking, wine-cooler drinking, and sex in the backseats of cars going to mean in a hundred years? Now extend these questions to the entire solar system.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“War is a great asshole magnet.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Even newlyweds don't spend much time together, now that few marriages outlast the appliance warranties.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

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

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Source: Parliament of Whores (1991), p. 14

“The American political system is like a gigantic Mexican Christmas fiesta. Each political party is a huge piñata — a papier-mâché donkey, for example. The donkey is filled with full employment, low interest rates, affordable housing, comprehensive medical benefits, a balanced budget and other goodies. The American voter is blindfolded and given a stick. The voter then swings the stick wildly in every direction, trying to hit a political candidate on the head and knock some sense into the silly bastard.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Parliament of Whores (1991)

“Somalia is so bad that making a mess improves the place.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“There are two organizations pushing for change in November — al Qaeda and the Democratic party. And they both have the same message: 'We're going to fix you, America.' On the whole, the terrorists have a more straightforward plan for fixing things. They're going to blow themselves up. Although, come to think of it, Howard Dean did that.”

P. J. O'Rourke

"Putting Words in the President's Mouth" (12 October 2004)