P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

P. J. O'Rourke Biography
Type: Comedian
Nationality: American
Born: November 14, 1947

Patrick Jake "P. J." O'Rourke (born November 14, 1947) is an American political satirist, journalist, writer, and author. O'Rourke is the H. L. Mencken Research Fellow at the 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!. In the United Kingdom, 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 16 books, of which his latest, Don't Vote, It Just Encourages the Bastards, was released in September 2010. This was preceded in 2009 by Driving Like Crazy. According to a 60 Minutes profile, he is also the most quoted living man in The Penguin Dictionary of Modern Humorous Quotations.

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

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.
P. J. O'Rourke

After all, what is your host's purpose in having a party? Surely not for you to enjoy yourself; if that were their sole purpose, they'd have simply sent champagne and women over to your place by taxi.
P. J. O'Rourke

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

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

Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.
P. J. O'Rourke

Children must be considered in a divorce considered valuable pawns in the nasty legal and financial contest that is about to ensue.
P. J. O'Rourke

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.
P. J. O'Rourke

Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.
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

Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us.
P. J. O'Rourke

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.
P. J. O'Rourke

Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
P. J. O'Rourke

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.
P. J. O'Rourke

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O'Rourke

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

Government proposes, bureaucracy disposes. And the bureaucracy must dispose of government proposals by dumping them on us.
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

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