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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

“I wonder how many of the people who profess to believe in the leveling ideas of collectivism and egalitarianism really just believe that they themselves are good for nothing. I mean, how many leftists are animated by a quite reasonable self-loathing? In their hearts they know that they are not going to become scholars or inventors or industrialists or even ordinary good kind people. So they need a way to achieve that smugness for which the left is so justifiably famous. They need a way to achieve self-esteem without merit. Well, there is politics. In an egalitarian world everything will be controlled by politics, and politics requires no merit.”

P. J. O'Rourke

A Message to Redistributionists (1997)

“There's only one secret to bachelor cooking — not caring how it tastes.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

“She's wrong about absolutely everything, but she's wrong within normal parameters.”

P. J. O'Rourke

Endorsing Hillary Clinton for President over Donald Trump, May 7, 2016 http://www.npr.org/2016/05/09/477339063/conservative-author-pj-orourke-reluctantly-backs-clinton on NPR

“Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“I am no stranger to loud noise. I've been to a Mitch Ryder and the Detroit Wheels concert. I once dated a woman with two kids.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works.”

P. J. O'Rourke

Roast of Robert Novak at the Conservative Political Action Committee (11 February 1994)

“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)

“Every generation finds the drug it needs.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

“Italy is not technically part of the Third World, but no one has told the Italians.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“Bureaucrats want bigger bureaus. Special interests are interested in whatever's special to them. These two groups bring great pressure to bear upon politicians who have another agenda yet: to cater to the temporary whims and fads of the public and the press.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Saigon is like all the other great modern cities of the world. It's the mess left from people getting rich.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“Marijuana is […] self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive and in this world, what worse punishment could there be?”

P. J. O'Rourke

Rolling Stone (November 1989), as cited in The Yale Book of Quotations https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Special:BookSources/0300107986, ed. Fred Shapiro, Yale University Press (2006), p. 567

“Only one way to cover a story like this, and make that a double, bartender, please.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“The typical old-fashioned diet was so bad it almost resembled modern dieting.”

P. J. O'Rourke

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

“A charity ball is like a dance except it's tax deductible.”

P. J. O'Rourke

Modern Manners (1983)

“The real truth about children is they don't speak the language very well. They're physically uncoordinated. And they are ignorant of our elaborate ideas about right and wrong.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

“Freddie Aguilar, who's billed as "the Bob Dylan of the Philippines." This is unfair, since he's good-looking, plays the guitar well, can carry a tune, and writes songs that make sense.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Republican Party Reptile

Republican Party Reptile (1987)

“The most extraordinary change in Moscow was Arbat Street, the USSR's first pedestrian mall. Of course, there's something a little sad about a pedestrian mall in a nation where few people own cars— the whole damn country's a pedestrian mall.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

“Remember, your body needs 6 to 8 glasses of fluid daily. Straight up or on the rocks.”

P. J. O'Rourke

The Bachelor Home Companion (1986)

“There are twenty-seven specific complaints against the British Crown set forth in the Declaration of Independence. To modern ears they still sound reasonable, in large part, because so many of them can be leveled against the federal government of the United States.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Parliament of Whores (1991)