top of page
Exlpore more Society quotes

"Though the earth contains greater energy and mass than any single being, linked together, "people make the world go-round"."

"William Cowper said that God made the country, and man made the town. If it was the opposite, there would be no country; because town can be created from the country but the country cannot be created from the town!"

"Why, because an author has more rights than ordinary people, as everybody knows. People will stand much more from him."

"Shyness is a luxury reserved for those who are above the poverty line. To a beggar, being shy is deadly."

"When a man's girlfriend's parents ask him what it is that he does for a living: they're not really concerned about him, they're concerned about their daughter's tummy."

"The use of fashions in thought is to distract men from their real dangers. We direct the fashionable outcry of each generation against those vices of which it is in the least danger, and fix its approval on the virtue that is nearest the vice which we are trying to make endemic. The game is to have them all running around with fire extinguishers whenever there's a flood; and all crowding to that side of the boat which is already nearly gone under."

"Every person should decide for himself how happy, or unhappy, our society might be."

"Insanity in individuals is something rare - but in groups, parties, nations and epochs, it is the rule."

"I live in the Managerial Age, in a world of "Admin." The greatest evil is not now done in those sordid "dens of crime" that Dickens loved to paint. It is not done even in concentration camps and labour camps. In those we see its final result. But it is conceived and ordered (moved, seconded, carried, and minuted) in clean, carpeted, warmed and well-lighted offices, by quiet men with white collars and cut fingernails and smooth-shaven cheeks who do not need to raise their voices. Hence, naturally enough, my symbol for Hell is something like the bureaucracy of a police state or the office of a thoroughly nasty business con."
Explore more quotes by P. J. O'Rourke

"America wasn't founded so that we could all be better. America was founded so we could all be anything we damned well pleased."

"The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't work and then they get elected and prove it."

"There is 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."
bottom of page