P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

Smoking is one of the leading causes of all statistics.

He that dies before sixty, of a cold or consumption, dies, in reality, by a violent death.

If you live long enough, sooner or later everybody you know has cancer.

It is now proved beyond doubt that smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.

I warn you not to be ordinary, I warn you not to be young, I warn you not to fall ill, and I warn you not to grow old.

In 1900 Americans on average lived for only 49 years and most working people died still on the job.

While teaching a course on global development at Uppsala University in Sweden, I realized our students didn't have a fact-based worldview. They talked about 'we' and 'them.' They thought there were two groups of countries: the Western world, with small families and long lives, and the Third World, with large families and short lives.

Smoking is one of the leading causes of statistics.

Millions of people die every day. Everyone's got to go sometime. I've came by this particular tumor honestly. If you smoke, which I did for many years very heavily with occasional interruption, and if you use alcohol, you make yourself a candidate for it in your sixties.

Smoking kills. If you're killed, you've lost a very important part of your life.

Adults worldwide can today look forward to a life-expectancy of 60 plus. But not young Pakistani women: they die like flies, daily, during childbirth...

In 1955, Cuba had a life expectancy of 59.5 years, shorter than Paraguay, Argentina, and Uruguay… In 1985 the average Cuban could expect to live until the age of 75, longer than anyone else in Latin America and just short of the average American (75.9 years). Cuba’s children were the best fed and the level of literacy was the highest [in Latin America].

You never think about your own mortality. At least not until your back gives way when you're 40.

Cancer is, in general, an increasingly important topic, in part because we've gotten so good at preventing other forms of death that cancer, despite some gains made against it, is becoming even more prominent.

I've written about how mortality is a wonderful indicator of societal progress.

Health care is, at its core, about improving the odds of life in its struggle against death. Of extending that game which we will all lose, each and every one of us unto eternity, extending it another year or month or second.

I'll be dead by the time I'm forty.

One of the things that got me on this topic for this book was that when I was researching the column I wrote in 2009 saying that I was stepping down from my column at "Newsweek" because I wanted to make room for newer, fresh voices out there, I discovered that in the year I was born, 1952, the average life expectancy of an American was 68. I was shocked by that figure and every time I mention it I hear a gasp from somebody in the crowd. Now, of course, we're more or less at 80, so that means that we've gotten 12 additional years.

Life is a fatal complaint, and an eminently contagious one.

I have not long to live. I have lasted more than a man's average allotted span, and while I still am hale and hearty, I know full well the hand of time , while it may miss a man at one reaping, will get him at the next.

whereas, up to the present, there is only one known way of getting born, there are endless ways of getting killed.

Some think, "If I marry this guy who's two inches taller than I am and who has a nice bank account, I won't die. If I buy six cars, I won't die. If I hate Jews, I won't die. If I hate homosexuals, I won't die." They think they will increase their life by shunting misery onto somebody else, but it's just the opposite.

Most men are essentially dead by thirty.

Cut if you will with sleep's dull knife, the years from off your life, my friend! the years that death takes off my life, he'll take from off the other end!

He that dies in extreme old age will be reduced to the same state with him that is cut down untimely.