“Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“We had a choice between Democrats who couldn’t learn from the past and Republicans who couldn’t stop living in it…”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― 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 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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“The average IQ in America is—and this can be proven mathematically—average.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“America wasn’t founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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
“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
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Never wear anything that panics the cat.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“It’s better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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?”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us. ”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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?”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“There are no kinder or better people in the world than those who listen to you when you are 18.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Microeconomics is about money you don’t have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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. ”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Smoking crack is a way for people who couldn’t afford college to study the works of Charles Darwin.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Politicians are wonderful people as longa as they stay away from things they don’t understand, such as working for a living.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Everybody wants to save the Earth; nobody wants to help Mom do the dishes.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it’s free.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“We had a choice between Democrats who couldn’t learn from the past and Republicans who couldn’t stop living in it…”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― 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 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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“The average IQ in America is—and this can be proven mathematically—average.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“America wasn’t founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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
“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
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Never wear anything that panics the cat.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“It’s better to spend money like there’s no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there’s no money.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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?”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Making fun of born-again Christians is like hunting dairy cows with a high powered rifle and scope.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“One of the problems with being a writer is that all of your idiocies are still in print somewhere. I strongly support paper recycling.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us. ”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in women. Chief among these is the Mercedes-Benz 380SL convertible.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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?”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“There are no kinder or better people in the world than those who listen to you when you are 18.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Microeconomics is about money you don’t have, and macroeconomics is about money the government is out of.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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. ”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Smoking crack is a way for people who couldn’t afford college to study the works of Charles Darwin.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“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.”
― P.J. O’Rourke
“Politicians are wonderful people as longa as they stay away from things they don’t understand, such as working for a living.”
― P. J. O’Rourke
“Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.”
― P. J. O’Rourke