John Petrie’s Collection of

P.J. O’Rourke Quotes

Patrick Jake O’Rourke (1947- )

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

There’s only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please. And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.

Political systems must love poverty—they produce so much of it. Poor people make easier targets for a demagogue. No Mao or even Jiang Zemin is likely to arise on the New York Stock Exchange floor. And politicians in democracies benefit from destitution, too. The US has had a broad range of poverty programs for 30 years. Those programs have failed. Millions of people are still poor. And those people vote for politicians who favor keeping the poverty programs in place. There’s a conspiracy theory in there somewhere.

The mystery of government is not how Washington works but how to make it stop.

One of the annoying things about believing in free will and individual responsibility is the difficulty of finding somebody to blame your problems on. And when you do find somebody, it’s remarkable how often his picture turns up on your driver’s license.

Always read stuff that will make you look good if you die in the middle of it.

Very little is known of the Canadian country since it is rarely visited by anyone but the Queen and illiterate sport fishermen.

Feeling good about government is like looking on the bright side of any catastrophe. When you quit looking on the bright side, the catastrophe is still there.

Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.

Anyway, no drug, not even alcohol, causes the fundamental ills of society. If we’re looking for the source of our troubles, we shouldn’t test people for drugs, we should test them for stupidity, ignorance, greed and love of power.

The college idealists who fill the ranks of the environmental movement seem willing to do absolutely anything to save the biosphere, except take science courses and learn something about it.