P. J. O'rourke Quotes

The library, with its Daedalian labyrinth, mysterious hush, and faintly ominous aroma of knowledge, has been replaced by the computer's cheap glow, pesky chirp, and data spillage.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Call a man 'ignorant,' and you have license to show the world your vast fund of knowledge and wise him up.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Public schools helped create the idea of America and inculcate Americans with a few rudiments of knowledge. To judge by that very American item, the Internet, a few rudiments is all anyone cares to have.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Never wear anything that panics the cat.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Californians are people who insist on growing their own vegetables, but they won't dig up the pretty lawn, won't plant anything for fear of getting dirty, and they use fragrant bath salts from The Body Shop instead of smelly compost.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Tom DeLay may or may not have broken campaign finance laws, but he did his best to look like he was breaking them.

~ 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 doesn't have a job and/or insurance and can't pay the hospital.

~ 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 disease.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Sheep farming is heavily subsidized in Great Britain. Without the subsidies, the green grazing in the valley of the River Exe would be gone. The handsome agricultural landscape of which the British are so proud, carefully husbanded since Boudicca's day, would be replaced by natural growth. The most likely growth is real-estate developments.

~ P. J. O'rourke

If you think health care is expensive now, just wait 'til it's free.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Government is a health hazard. Governments have killed many more people than cigarettes or unbuckled seat belts ever have.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Nobody likes insurance companies, especially health insurance companies.

~ P. J. O'rourke

No Americans wants to see somebody lose their house because of health bills. Their boat? Maybe. Maybe the boat. But not the house.

~ P. J. O'rourke

The car provided Americans with an enviable standard of living. You could not get a steady job with high wages and health and retirement benefits working on the General Livestock Corporation assembly line putting udders on cows.

~ P. J. O'rourke

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

Health care's not about insurance! Health care's about getting treatment.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Nancy Pelosi says the angry opposition to health care reform is like the angry opposition to gay rights that led to Harvey Milk being shot.

~ P. J. O'rourke

I do have to travel a lot for speaking engagements.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Agriculture is a business that has been up to its bib overalls in politics since the first Thanksgiving dinner kickback to the Indians for subsidizing Pilgrim maize production with fish head fertilizer grants.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Explosion of positive rights started in 1932 with the election of Roosevelt.

~ 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

The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then a one-room apartment above it. There's street after street after street of that stuff.

~ P. J. O'rourke

There is the love and marriage and family kind of happiness, which is exceedingly boring to describe but nonetheless is important to have and dreadful not to have.

~ P. J. O'rourke

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

~ P. J. O'rourke

Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Never fight an inanimate object.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Being a humorist is not a voluntary thing. You can tell this because in a situation where saying a funny thing will cause a lot of trouble, a humorist will still say the funny thing. No matter how inappropriate.

~ P. J. O'rourke

Because of their size, parents may be difficult to discipline properly.

~ P. J. O'rourke

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

~ P. J. O'rourke

The good news is that, according to the Obama administration, the rich will pay for everything. The bad news is that, according to the Obama administration, you're rich.

~ P. J. O'rourke

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

~ P. J. O'rourke

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

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

~ 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

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

~ P. J. O'rourke

The more aspects of life that can be moved from private reign to public realm, the better it is for politics.

~ P. J. O'rourke

The problem, when comparing contemporary television to television in 1974, is that TV has become not just bad but sad.

~ P. J. O'rourke

I understand Twitter has become popular among politicians. This technology allows them to stay in perpetual contact with their constituents. The electorate now has instant information about what politicians have been up to.

~ P. J. O'rourke

My dad died when I was young; my mom remarried with more haste than sense to a fellow... he wasn't evil or anything, but he was worthless.

~ 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