P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

• 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

• Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Insurance

• 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

• Fortunately, I’m married to someone who’s a pretty excellent parent!

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Fortunately

• 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

• I’m a rather decisive type.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rather

• Soldiers are not policemen, and it’s very unfair, even for those soldiers who have some police training, to burden them with police duties. It’s not what they’re trained for, or equipped for.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Soldiers

• One of the enduring problems with certain societies in the world – and this is certainly true of a lot of places in the Middle East – is that the capacity for self-governance and self-organizing just isn’t there. It has to do with history.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in History

  Tags in World, Problem

• Little islands of human happiness, peace, and prosperity are so exceptional at this point in history that I’m not even sure we can draw lessons from them.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in History

  Tags in Happiness, Peace

• You don’t despair about something like the Middle East, you just do the best you can.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Best

• People think the free market is a philosophy, they think that it is a creed. It is none of those things. Free market is a bathroom scale, it is a measuring tape, it’s simply a measurement.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Think, Measurement

• I read good. I was an English major.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in English

• Finland is a rich country. What have they got? They got Nokia phones and plywood. How’d they get so rich? Because they’re free.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Country

• Something is worth what somebody will pay for it. Nothing else, nothing more, nothing less.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Worth

• Positive rights are the right to shelter, the right to education, the right to health care, the right to a living wage. These things are – these are, I would call them, more properly, political rights rather than positive rights. And they are extremely tricky, because now we are dealing with things that are zero sum.

   

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Politics

  Tags in Positive Thinking

• You may be surprised to discover you’re rich, especially if you’re broke.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Rich

• You can’t get rid of poverty by giving people money.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Money

• Whatever it is that the government does, sensible Americans would prefer that the government does it to somebody else. This is the idea behind foreign policy.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in Government, Foreign Policy

• There’s something about Marxism that brings out warts; the only kind of growth this economic system encourages.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Economy

  Tags in Growth

• There’s one more terrifying fact about old people: I’m going to be one soon.

  P. J. O'Rourke

  Topics in Uncategorized

  Tags in People, Fact

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.

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