P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

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

Never fight an inanimate object.

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.

Some people are better imagined in one's bed than found there in the morning.

Seriousness is stupidity sent to college.

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

You can't get rid of poverty by giving people money.

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.

Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.

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

Nothing bad is going to happen to us.

If we get fired, it's not failure; its a midlife vocational reassessment.

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

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

America wasn't founded so that we could all be better.

America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased.

Each child is biologically required to have a mother.

Fatherhood is a well-regarded theory, but motherhood is a fact.

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

You may be surprised to discover you're rich, especially if you're broke.

Never be unfaithful to a lover, except with your wife.

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

Politics are for foreigners with their endless wrongs and paltry rights.

Politics are a lousy way to get things done. Politics are, like God's infinite mercy, a last resort.

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

If you are young and you drink a great deal it will spoil your health, slow your mind, make you fat - in other words, turn you into an adult.

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.

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.

Good manners are a combination of intelligence, education, taste and style mixed together so that you don't need any of those things.

The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk.

This drunkenness culminates on New Year's Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you're married to.

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

A very quiet and tasteful way to be famous is to have a famous relative.

Then you can not only be nothing, you can do nothing too.

Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren't present.

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.

Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.

Of all the American educational system's problems, none is more severe than the academic year beginning before Labor Day.

Corporate corruption has ecological merits.

It's helping to preserve that species known as Democrats - thought to be endangered as recently as the year 2000.

The idea of a world where all people are alike - in wealth or in anything else - is a fantasy for the stupid.

Demolishing pretensions, especially worthy ones, is a hallmark of the baby boom.

'You're stupid,' is not something even his most severe critics usually say to President Barack Obama.

In Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is more interesting: a viper-toothed, puling, supercilious crank, thwarted in ambition, aging gracelessly, mad at the cosmos, and ashamed of his own jejune ideals. He is nevertheless very dear to me.

Head lice have their own animal-rights group, or may as well.

The National Pediculosis Association doesn't exactly advocate letting lice live with dignity, but it does oppose pediculicidal treatments.

Sometimes the right response to evil is an appeal to powerful and effective social organization - an appeal to civilization itself.

The great thing about being a print journalist is that you are permitted to duck. Cameramen get killed while the writers are flat on the floor. A war correspondent for the BBC dedicated his memoir to 50 fallen colleagues, and I guarantee you they were all taking pictures. I am only alive because I am such a chicken.

Fortunately, I'm married to someone who's a pretty excellent parent!

Global warming is a fact. Now it's up to liberals to make it a reality. Hence there is crucial importance in preventing powerful, greedy free market forces from getting in the way of worsening storms and rising sea levels. The Kyoto Accord is a good first step.

A fundamental American question is, 'What's the big idea?'

There are selves too big for one person to contain.

You cannot call them selfish. There is nothing -ish about such selves. They are the self, as it were, itself.

The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore.

Satire doesn't effect change.

There is only one thing that gives me hope as a Republican, and that is the Democrats. It's going to be hard to do a worse job running American than the Republicans have, but if anybody can do it, it's the Democrats.

The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely.

Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that's the point.

The prevalence of mobile homes does not correspond with the prevalence of poverty, or with much of anything else. All that can be confidently said about America's mobile homes is that they are massed in places where you wouldn't want to be in one. Florida's mobile homes lie athwart the path of hurricanes. Georgia's are in the way of tornadoes.

Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.