More P. J. O'Rourke quotes
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.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke In its worse forms, conservatism is a matter of ‘I hate strangers and anything that’s different.’
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke Gossip is what you say about the objects of flattery when they aren’t present.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke 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.
P. J. O'RourkeP. 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'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke Southern California is a nice place, if you could cut out the show-business cancer. It just keeps spreading.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke Family love is messy, clinging, and of an annoying and repetitive pattern, like bad wallpaper.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke No doubt the ridiculous politicians are right to like politics. They have found careers in which success can be achieved by being ridiculous. Imagine Jimmy Carter or George W. Bush rising to the top of any other profession.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke Don’t send funny greeting cards on birthdays or at Christmas. Save them for funerals, when their cheery effect is needed.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke The problem in Afghanistan is really not so much land as water. It’s a dry country with ample amounts of water running through it, but not to good enough effect.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke The most brilliant satire of all time was ‘A Modest Proposal’ by Jonathan Swift. You’ll notice how everything got straightened out in Ireland within days of that coming out.
P. J. O'RourkeP. 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'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke The minute somebody joins a committee… they immediately suffer from committee brain. They become wildly over-enthusiastic, over-optimistic, over-pessimistic. Committees turn people into idiots, and politics is a committee.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke The beauty of democracy is that an average, random, unremarkable citizen can lead it.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke Once you’ve built the big machinery of political power, remember you won’t always be the one to run it.
P. J. O'RourkeP. J. O'Rourke