Quotes by P. J. O'Rourke

About P. J. O'Rourke:

Patrick Jake 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!. Since 2011 O'Rourke has been a columnist at The Daily Beast. In the United Kingdom, he is known as the face of a long-running series of television advertisements for British Airways in the 1990s.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

The words 'Space Age' have a quaint, nostalgic tone - sitting on midcentury modern furniture watching 'The Jetsons.'

P. J. O'Rourke

All religions must be made child-proof. Our teachers' unions have done good work in this field, K through 12. Delaying first communions and bar mitzvahs until age 21 would be another positive step.

P. J. O'Rourke

Voting has proliferated in the United States, and it has reached a point where there is now almost one vote available per citizen over the age of eighteen.

P. J. O'Rourke

TV ushered in the age of postliteracy. And we have gone so far beyond that. I mean, what with the Internet and Google and Wikipedia. We have entered the age of post-intelligence.

P. J. O'Rourke

Politics is the one field you don't age out of.

P. J. O'Rourke

I think the Baby Boom does have a tendency to get its nose in everything. The Greatest Generation had a better tendency to leave people alone. Of course, they also had a better tendency to hate everybody's guts.

P. J. O'Rourke

Abstract anger is great for rhetorical carrying on. You can go on endlessly about the post office, but it doesn't mean you're mad at your mailman.

P. J. O'Rourke

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

In Israel, waves of anger and fear circulate all the time, but so do jokes and gossip and silky evening breezes. So, too, in America.

P. J. O'Rourke

On inspection, Gaudi's architecture isn't whimsical at all.

P. J. O'Rourke

Tel Aviv is new, built on the sand dunes north of Jaffa in the 1890s, about the same time Miami was founded. The cities bear a resemblance in size, site, climate, and architecture, which ranges from the bland to the fancifully bland.

P. J. O'Rourke

Like most sensible people, you probably lost interest in modern art about the time that Julian Schnabel was painting broken pieces of the crockery that his wife had thrown at him for painting broken pieces of crockery instead of painting the bathroom...

P. J. O'Rourke

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 ...

P. J. O'Rourke

Art Nouveau got its inspiration from nature. The Bauhaus got its inspiration from engineering.

P. J. O'Rourke

The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it.

P. J. O'Rourke

If government were a product, selling it would be illegal.

P. J. O'Rourke

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

P. J. O'Rourke

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

P. J. O'Rourke

The best and brightest don't go into politics. The best and brightest are at Goldman Sachs.

P. J. O'Rourke

A lot of newspaper columns used to be written in a rat-a-tat-tat, fast-paced style - and they tended to be funny. They were a little relief from the grimmer, grayer parts of the newspaper, and one of the best people at doing this was Will Rogers.

P. J. O'Rourke

Author Bio

  • NameP. J. O'Rourke
  • DescriptionAmerican journalist
  • BornNovember 14, 1947
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionJournalist; Author