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

What Alexander Graham Bell thought up occupied less space than a flower vase. Now it's so small that I have to search all my pockets to discover I've received a spam text.

P. J. O'Rourke

There are selves too big for one person to contain. You cannot call them selfish. There is nothing -ish about such selves. They are the self, as it were, itself.

P. J. O'Rourke

What is obnoxious about the motives of politicians - whatever those motives may be - is that politicians must announce their motives as visionary and grand.

P. J. O'Rourke

We loved cars until the '70s or so. Then they became appliances. They turned into motorized cup holders. Most of it has to do with urban sprawl. What began as pleasure ends up in necessity, as so many things do.

P. J. O'Rourke

In Henry Adams, I discovered not only the prototype of the modern thinker but also someone who is more interesting: a viper-toothed, puling, supercilious crank, thwarted in ambition, aging gracelessly, mad at the cosmos, and ashamed of his own jejune...

P. J. O'Rourke

Fall of the Berlin wall? Being there was fun. Nations that flaked off of the Soviet Union in southeastern Europe, Central Asia, and the Caucasus? Being there was not so fun.

P. J. O'Rourke

Corporate corruption has ecological merits. It's helping to preserve that species known as Democrats - thought to be endangered as recently as the year 2000.

P. J. O'Rourke

Are you a Democrat because you're a union member? Then why, after eight years of Bill Clinton, does some Chinese guy in Guangdong province have your job?

P. J. O'Rourke

It's better to make fun of yourself because you've always got someone around to make fun of, and they can't sue you.

P. J. O'Rourke

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

P. J. O'Rourke

We've come into the world of '1984,' but it turns out to be '1984'-Lite.

P. J. O'Rourke

Writing on a computer makes saving what's been written too easy. Pretentious lead sentences are kept, not tossed. Instead of sitting surrounded by crumpled paper, the computerized writer has his mistakes neatly stored in digital memory.

P. J. O'Rourke

I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash together to make a blob of a sentence that bears some likeness to reason and sense.

P. J. O'Rourke

Liberals want to live downtown. All over America - in New York, San Francisco, Chicago, Georgetown - there are crowds of liberals living in the gritty, ugly, dirty neighborhoods sensible people are trying to flee.

P. J. O'Rourke

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

P. J. O'Rourke

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

P. J. O'Rourke

Distracting a politician from governing is like distracting a bear from eating your baby.

P. J. O'Rourke

I am a student of stupidity. I am a political reporter.

P. J. O'Rourke

The average IQ in America is - and this can be proven mathematically - average.

P. J. O'Rourke

Earnestness is stupidity sent to college.

P. J. O'Rourke

Zero-sum thinking is an obsession of mine, but mostly in economics.

P. J. O'Rourke

Author Bio

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