quotes by 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

"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

"It's better to spend money like there's no tomorrow than to spend tonight like there's no money."
— P.J. O'Rourke

"Drugs have taught an entire generation of kids the metric system"
— 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 (Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People)

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

"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 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

"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

"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

"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 (Modern Manners: An Etiquette Book for Rude People)

"Never fight an inanimate object."
— 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

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

"God created a free universe. He could have created any kind of universe he wanted. But a universe without freedom would have been static and meaningless -- the taxpayer-funded-art-in-public-places universe."
— 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

"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 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

"Never wear anything that panics the cat."
— 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

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

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

"To grasp the true meaning of socialism, imagine a world where everything is designed by the post office, even the sleaze.
"
— 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

"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

"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

"always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it"
— P.J. O'Rourke

"You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they come from and refuse to tell you where they're going.
"
— P.J. O'Rourke

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

"Everybody wants to save the world, but nobody wants to help Mum with the dishes."
— 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

"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

"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 (On The Wealth of Nations)

"Always read something that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it."
— 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 (Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer)

"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 (Give War a Chance: Eyewitness Accounts of Mankind's Struggle Against Tyranny, Injustice, and Alcohol-Free Beer)

"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

"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 (Why I Am A Conservative)

"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

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

"The complexity of economics can be calculated mathematically. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart. Write out the algebraic equation that is the human heart and multiply each unknown by the population of the world."
— P.J. O'Rourke (On The Wealth of Nations)

"Every government is a parliament of whores. The trouble is, in a democracy, the whores are us. "
— 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