There are a number of mechanical devices which increase sexual arousal, particularly in
women. Chief among these is the Mercedes 380SL convertible.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Everyone wants to save the earth. No one wants to help Mom dry the dishes.
– P. J. O’Rourke
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
Government is to life what pantyhose are to sex.
– P. J. O’Rourke
True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why is this more stylish
than sitting inside drinking large glasses of whiskey I don’t know.
– 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
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
In theory, taxes should be like shopping. What I buy is government services. What I pay are
my taxes.
– P. J. O’Rourke
A nation with a goofy foreign policy needs a very serious policy of defense.
– P. J. O’Rourke
How often does a house need to be cleaned anyway? Just once every girlfriend. After that
she can get to know the real you.
– 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
Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or
unbuckled seat belts ever have.
– P. J. O’Rourke
This drunkenness culminates on New Year’s Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person
you’re married to.
– P. J. O’Rourke
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.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Bachelorhood, like being alive, is more depressing than anything but the known alternative.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Christmas begins about December 1st with an office party and ends when you finally realize
what you spent, around April 15th of the next year.
– 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
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
There’s one more terrifying thing about old people: I’m going to be one soon.
– 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
Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.
– P. J. O’Rourke
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
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.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.
– 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
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
Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Marijuana is… self-punishing. It makes you acutely sensitive, and in this world, what worse
punishment could there be?
– P. J. O’Rourke
Your money does not cause my poverty. Refusal to believe this is at the bottom of most bad
economic thinking.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Many reporters, when they go to work in the nation’s capital, begin thinking of themselves as
participants in the political process instead of glorified stenographers.
– P. J. O’Rourke
The only thing I’ve ever been able to figure out about stove cleaning is to move house every
couple of years.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Industrialization came to England but has since left.
– 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 is willing 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 will do good with his own money – if a gun is held to his head.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Drugs have taught an entire generation of English kids the metric system.
– P. J. O’Rourke
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
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
The average IQ in America is – and this can be proven mathematically – average.
– P. J. O’Rourke
You know, if government were a product, selling it would be illegal.
– P. J. O’Rourke
West Germans are tall, pert and orthodontically corrected, with hands, teeth and hair as
clean as their clothes and clothes as sharp as their looks. Except for the fact that they all
speak English pretty well, they’re indistinguishable from Americans.
– P. J. O’Rourke
A charity ball is like a dance except it’s tax deductible.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Liberals have invented whole college majors – psychology, sociology, women’s studies – to
prove that nothing is anybody’s fault.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Fish is the only food that is considered spoiled once it smells like what it is.
– 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.
– P. J. O’Rourke
War will exist as long as there’s a food chain.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there.
– P. J. O’Rourke
The idea of a news broadcast once was to find someone with information and broadcast it.
The idea now is to find someone with ignorance and spread it around.
– 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
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
The whole idea of our government is this: If enough people get together and act in concert,
they can take something and not pay for it.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Humans are the only animals that have children on purpose with the exception of guppies who
like to eat theirs.
– P. J. O’Rourke
There’s only one secret to bachelor cooking – not caring how it tastes.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Politicians are interested in people in the same way that dogs are interested in fleas.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Lust, pride, sloth, and gluttony, or, as we call them these days, “getting in touch with your
sexuality,” “raising your self-esteem,” “relaxation therapy,” and “being a recovered bulimic.”
– 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
A woman should dress to attract attention. To attract the most attention, a woman should
either be nude or wearing something as expensive as getting her nude is going to be.
– 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
Guns are always the best method for private suicide. Drugs are too chancy. You might
miscalculate the dosage and just wind up having a good time.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Practically anything you say will seem amusing if you’re on all fours.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Some people are worried about the difference between right and wrong. I’m worried about
the difference between wrong and fun.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
– P. J. O’Rourke
I have often been called a Nazi, and, although it is unfair, I don’t let it bother me. I don’t let
it bother me for one simple reason. No one has ever had a fantasy about being tied to a bed
and sexually ravished by someone dressed as a liberal.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Republicans are the party that says government doesn’t work, and then they get elected and
prove it.
– 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
In painting a ceiling, a good rule of thumb is that there should be at least as much paint on
the ceiling as on your hair.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Remember, your body needs 6 to 8 glasses of fluid daily. Straight up or on the rocks.
– P. J. O’Rourke
I’ve always figured that if God wanted us to go to church a lot He’d have given us bigger
behinds to sit on and smaller heads to think with.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Jewishness cropped up and has never successfully been put down since.
– P. J. O’Rourke
There is no way of vomiting courteous. You have to do the next best thing, which is to vomit
in such a way that the story you tell about it later will be amusing.
– P. J. O’Rourke
The French are masters of “the dog ate my homework” school of diplomatic relations.
– P. J. O’Rourke
Foreigners may pretend otherwise, but if English is spoken loudly enough, anyone can
understand it, the British included. Actually, there’s no such thing as a foreign language. The
world is just filled with people who grunt and squeak instead of speaking sensibly. French may
be an exception. But since it’s impossible to figure out what French people are saying, we’ll
never know for sure.
– P. J. O’Rourke
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
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