P. J. O'Rourke Life Quotations

There is a simple rule here, a rule of legislation, a rule of business, a rule of life: beyond a certain point, complexity is fraud. You can apply that rule to left-wing social programs, but you can also apply that rule to credit derivatives, hedge funds, all the rest of it.

Everybody knows how to raise children, except the people who have them.

Infant mortality and life expectancy are reasonable indicators of general well-being in a society.

A hat should be taken off when you greet a lady and left off for the rest of your life. Nothing looks more stupid than a hat.

Conservatives really don't believe in politics as the primary instrument of getting along in life and therefore don't tend to put their energy into it a way people left of center do.

A deadly sins addendum is long overdue. Life has changed since Pope Gregory the Great scribbled his initial list in the sixth century.

My life would have gone along perfectly well, politically speaking, if it hadn't been for girls.

Woodstock had a tremendous impact on American artistic life.

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

If there are three words that need to be used more in American journalism, commentary, politics, personal life... it's the magic words 'I don't know.'

A person has got to balance work and life and family in order to be a balanced person.

Soccer matches should be something special, something people eagerly look forward to, something that brightens life.

Never fight an inanimate object.

I'd like to end the book a lot of ways. Except I don't have any answers. Use your common sense. Be nice. This is the best I can do. All the trouble in the world is human trouble. Well, that's not true. But when cancer cells run amok and burst out of the prostate and take over the liver and lymph glands and end up killing everything in the body including themselves, they certainly are acting like some humans we know.

We are a nation that worships speed and power. And for good reason. Without power we would still be part of England and everybody would be out of work... Bicycles are too slow and impuissant for a nation like ours. They belong in Czechoslovakia.

The people I see on bicycles look like organic-gardening zealots who advocate federal regulation of bedtime and want American foreign policy to be dictated by UNICEF. These people should be confined.

Imagine if all of life were determined by majority rule. Every meal would be a pizza. Every pair of pants, even those in a Brooks Brothers suit, would be stone-washed denim. Celebrity diet and exercise books would be the only thing on the shelves at the library. And - since women are a majority of the population - we'd all be married to Mel Gibson.

We should never hesitate to listen to a fool about life because life is pretty foolish as far as I can tell.