Sloths move at the speed of congressional debate but with greater deliberation and less noise. — P. J. O'Rourke Animal Copy Share Image
I had grown up as a feature writer, and basically my career had been in The National Lampoon and as a magazine… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
No government proposal more complicated than "This note is legal tender for all debts, public and private" ever works. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Freedom is not empowerment. Empowerment is what the Serbs have in Bosnia. Anybody can grab a gun and be empowered. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
People have a right to my food, a right to my housing, and a right to my good job for my decent… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
You can't get something for nothing. Everybody remembers this except politicians. — P. J. O'Rourke Inspirational Copy Share Image
A nation with a goofy foreign policy needs a very serious policy of defense. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
The whole melodrama of the Middle East would be improved if amnesia were as common here as it is in melodramatic plots. — P. J. O'Rourke Amnesia Copy Share Image
If you talk to most businessmen, they'll say that what they do is for the public good, but you know they're just… — P. J. O'Rourke Businessmen Copy Share Image
France in August when you can travel through the entire country without encountering a single pesky Frenchman or being bothered with anything… — P. J. O'Rourke August Copy Share Image
The difference between American parties is actually simple. Democrats are in favor of higher taxes to pay for greater spending, while Republicans… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
There is parody, when you make fun of people who are smarter than you; satire, when you make fun of people who… — P. J. O'Rourke Burlesque Copy Share Image
I spend my days kneeling in the muck of language, feeling around for gooey verbs, nouns, and modifiers that I can squash… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Then there's politics. Just imagine politics with its dumbbell element subtracted. There would be no Republican candidates. There would be no Democratic… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
You start out with Mad magazine, and you go right through the sort of black humor of Lenny Bruce, Lord Buckley, Mort… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to… — P. J. O'Rourke America Copy Share Image
It remains to be seen which program will cause greater societal damage: China's one-child policy or America's one-parent policy. — P. J. O'Rourke America Copy Share Image
If we're free to do what we want, why does government always have a plan for us? — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share Image
Russian cars are silly. They look like imports drawn by a cartoonist for a UAW newsletter. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
America is the world's policeman, all right -- a big, dumb, mick flatfoot in the middle of the one thing cops dread… — P. J. O'Rourke America Copy Share Image
If we heard that somebody starved to death in Sweden or Switzerland, we would be shocked. — P. J. O'Rourke Death Copy Share Image
I like to have interesting things to write about. And when one says something is 'interesting,' one almost always means 'bad.' — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Intelligence collection has been given an additional bureaucracy to correct the problems created by too much bureaucracy in intelligence collection. — P. J. O'Rourke Bureaucracy Copy Share Image
When buying and selling are controlled by legislation, the first things to be bought and sold are legislators. — P. J. O'Rourke Buying Copy Share Image
Chinese economic development has cost many American workers their jobs. That's the price of progress. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
You know your children are growing up when they stop asking you where they came from and refuse to tell you where… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
People say, 'Oh, politics is so polarized today,' and I'm thinking... '1861, that was polarized.' — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
The political process consists entirely of politicians talking out of their butts. — P. J. O'Rourke Political Copy Share Image
Visiting Future World is like opening a Chinese fortune cookie to read, "Soon you'll be finished with dinner." — P. J. O'Rourke Chinese Copy Share Image
I had always thought of Egypt as a rather secular country. And I think it is, but people are quite observant of… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Watching Republicans in Washington is like watching lemmings, if lemmings jumped into cesspools instead of off cliffs. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
In the past a man was expected to give his seat on a bus to a woman. Today it would be much… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Violence is interesting. This is a great obstacle to world peace and also to more thoughtful television programming. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
I'm here as a radio journalist but am not even sure which part of a tape recorder takes the pictures. — P. J. O'Rourke Funny Copy Share Image
The laws of the marketplace are physical laws, and they don't become suspended in a crisis any more than the law of… — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Personally, I believe a rocking hammock, a good cigar, and a tall gin-and-tonic is the way to save the planet. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Detroit is beautiful - though you probably have to be a child of the industrial Midwest, like me, to see it. — P. J. O'Rourke Beautiful Copy Share Image
The real purpose of welfare is to get rid of poor people entirely. Everybody knows welfare has bad effects; that's the point. — P. J. O'Rourke Copy Share Image
Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen. — P. J. O'Rourke Canada Copy Share Image
