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

They are just really stupid people in Hollywood. You write them a script, and they say they love it, they absolutely love it. Then they say, 'But doesn't it need a small dog, and an Eskimo, and shouldn't it be set in New Guinea?' And you say, 'But it...

P. J. O'Rourke

There's a love of rhetorical skill in the Muslim world. Osama bin Laden doesn't just go on tape cassettes and say, 'America sucks.' He recites poetry; he finds things that 'America sucks' rhymes with.

P. J. O'Rourke

People are not ants or bees. We do not reason or love or live or die collectively.

P. J. O'Rourke

Love can never be fully explained.

P. J. O'Rourke

People love to be told what they know already.

P. J. O'Rourke

When you pay a hospital bill, you're really paying two hospital bills - one bill for you because you have a job and/or insurance and can pay the hospital. and another bill, which is tacked onto your bill, to cover the medical expenses of someone who ...

P. J. O'Rourke

Medical researchers don't know much about head lice because they don't much care. The reason that they don't much care is, paradoxically, that they know a lot. That is, they know one important thing: there is no evidence that head lice transmit disea...

P. J. O'Rourke

There's a certain kind of behavior in the Arab world that, to me, resembles the way young men behave when there is no significant influence from women in their lives.

P. J. O'Rourke

There is one thing women can never take away from men. We die sooner.

P. J. O'Rourke

I'm too tough and sensitive to have to have some pubescent twerp with his mom's earring in his tongue, who combs his hair with Redi-Whip and has an Ani DiFranco tattoo on his shin, come show me how a computer works.

P. J. O'Rourke

Gay marriage acceptance is happening in the blink of an eye.

P. J. O'Rourke

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

P. 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'Rourke

When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators.

P. J. O'Rourke

Politics is a necessary evil, or a necessary annoyance, a necessary conundrum.

P. J. O'Rourke

There are two factors in American politics that may seem strange to Europeans: race and religion.

P. J. O'Rourke

Daniel Patrick Moynihan is the archetypal extremely smart person who went into politics anyway instead of doing something worthwhile for his country.

P. J. O'Rourke

Space has always been confusing to politics.

P. 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'Rourke

People say, 'Oh, politics is so polarized today,' and I'm thinking... '1861, that was polarized.'

P. J. O'Rourke

Politics is the attempt to achieve power and prestige without merit.

P. J. O'Rourke

Author Bio

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