P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

It had never occurred to us that the Kremlin's new anti-booze campaign would apply to journalists. Now, that's a human-rights violation.

When a private entity does not produce the desired results, it is (certain body parts excepted) done away with. But a public entity gets bigger.

Pain is the body's way of showing us we're bone-heads. A child growing up in an excessively safe environment may never learn that he is one — not until he gets married and has a wife to tell him so.

There’s a whiff of the lynch mob or the lemming migration about any overlarge concentration of like-thinking individuals, no matter how virtuous their cause.

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.

The Soviet constitution guarantees everyone a job. A pretty scary idea, I'd say.

For some mysterious Darwinian reason, women feel compelled to straighten up bedrooms before and after sex. Try to make love in every other room of the house.

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

Even newlyweds don't spend much time together, now that few marriages outlast the appliance warranties.

The America's Cup is like driving your Lamborghini to the Grand Prix track to watch the charter buses race.

Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there.

Bachelors know all about parties. In fact, a good bachelor is a living, breathing party all by himself. At least that is what my girlfriend said when she found the gin bottles under the couch. I believe her exact words were, "You're a disgusting, drunken mess." And that's a good description of a party, if it's done right.

Health care is too expensive, so the Clinton administration is putting Hillary in charge of making it cheaper. (This is what I always do when I want to spend less money — hire a lawyer from Yale.) If you think health care is expensive now, wait until you see what it costs when it's free.

If we're going to improve the environment, the first thing we should do is duck the government. The second thing we should do is quit being moral. Screw the rights of nature. Nature will have rights as soon as it get duties. The minute we see birds, trees, bugs, and squirrels picking up litter, giving money to charity, and keeping an eye on our kids at the park, we'll let them vote.

In a society where commonweal does not exist, there are no duties, only exactations to be avoided, and no freedoms, only privileges to be grabbed. There can be no such thing as "public services" because nothing in the country is truly public. Everything is somebody's fief. And every fief must be exploited if the exploiter cares to survive.