P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

• 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

  Topics in America

• 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

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Taste, Famous

• I’m a rather decisive type.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rather

• The body is forever teaching us lessons. There are all sorts of things that we can’t do, shouldn’t do, had better not do very often or do for too long as we get older. The body makes its presence known.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Teachers and teaching

• No humorist is under any obligation to provide answers and probably if you were to delve into the literary history of humour it’s probably all about not providing answers because the humorist essentially says: this is the way things are.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Humor

  Tags in Humorist

• Fiscal conservatism is just an easy way to express something that is a bit more difficult, which is that the size and scope of government, and really the size and scope of politics in our lives, has grown uncomfortable, unwieldy, intrusive and inefficient.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Government

• The inherent purpose of American government is let people seek their own goals and to encourage them to be responsible on the various adventures they have on their way to those goals, good, bad, and otherwise.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Goal

  Tags in American

• I rarely meet a politician that I don’t like personally. They are generally well endowed with charm. Therein lies the danger.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Politician

• Political systems are run by self-selecting politicians. We don’t draft people; it’s not jury duty.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Systems

• I like making things. I have a wood shop at home. I am a terrible carpenter but I love doing it.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Like, Making

• I realised the bohemian life was not for me. I would look around at my friends, living like starving artists, and wonder, ‘Where’s the art?’ They weren’t doing anything. And there was so much interesting stuff to do, so much fun to be had… maybe I could even quit renting.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Art, Life

  Tags in Living

• People are always angry at America. They’re absolutely certain that America either caused their problems or is deliberately not fixing their problems. But the anger is always directed at America and never at Americans.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in America

  Tags in American

• There are plenty of problems in the world, and doubtless climate change – or whatever the currently voguish phrase for it all is – certainly is one of them. But it’s low on my list.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Change, Climate

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

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Business

• Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Insurance

• I write because I like to make things and the only things I am good at making things with are words.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Write, Words

• I’m really tired of virtue.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Try

• My wife and I both come from Irish families. There are two kinds of Irish families: the hitting kind and the kidding kind. If you’re fortunate – and both of us are – you come from the kidding kind of Irish family.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Family

  Tags in Wife

• As I get older, all sorts of things become less funny. Once one has children, any cruelty involving children becomes far less amusing than when one was at the mercy of one’s friends’ and relatives’ children.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Children, Funny

• I think it’s been hard for people to understand how Islam can be a good religion, and yet the Islamists are evil. Those of us who have had experience with Islam understand this, just as we understand the difference between snake handlers and people going to church on Sunday morning.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Experience

  Tags in Understand

P. J. O'Rourke (107)

Birth:	14th November, 1947
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Journalist, Politician, Satirist, Writer

About

P. J. O'Rourke 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.

Related Authors

• Daniel Hannan
• Gregg Easterbrook
• Katharine Whitehorn
• Joseph Pulitzer
• Albert Camus
• Bill Loguidice
• Julie Burchill
• Joseph Howe
• Hans Koning
• George Jonas

Advertisement

Today's Anniversary - 19th November

Births

• 1941 - Tommy George Thompson
• 1981 - DJ Tukutz
• 1961 - Meg Ryan
• 1939 - Larry King
• 1939 - Tom Harkin

Deaths

• 1850 - Richard Mentor Johnson
• 1971 - Xu Zhimo
• 1915 - Solomon Schechter
• 1692 - Thomas Shadwell
• 2004 - Terry Melcher