P. J. O'Rourke Quotes

The transformation of the United States from a traditional republic to a democratic nation run in large measure by a single executive took a couple of hundred years.

I hunted far enough to suspect that the Fathers of the Republic who wrote our Sacred Constitution of the United States not only did not, but did not want to, establish a democratic government.

The Founders knew that a democracy would lead to some kind of tyranny. The term democracy appears in none of our Founding documents. Their vision for us was a Republic and limited government.

South Carolina is too small for a republic and too large for an insane asylum.

Ancient Rome declined because it had a Senate, now what's going to happen to us with both a House and a Senate?

The American political system was created by a bunch of geniuses so that it could be run by a bunch of idiots.

The United States is dangerously close to becoming a democracy instead of a republic.

The founding fathers set up this country as a republic—not a democracy.

The election of the Executive ought to be by the national Legislature, that then respect will be paid to that character best qualified

The majority of the members of the Irish parliament are professional politicians, in the sense that otherwise they would not be given jobs minding mice at a crossroads.

Some have argued that the United States was designed to block majority rule; to be a 'republic, not a democracy.' This is ahistorical nonsense.

In a republic there is no coercive force as in other governments, the laws must therefore endeavor to supply this defect.

The one thing our Founding Fathers could not foresee - they were farmers, professional men, businessmen giving of their time and effort to an idea that became a country - was a nation governed by professional politicians who had an interest in getting re-elected. They probably envisioned a fellow serving a couple of hitches and then eagerly looking forward to getting back to the farm.

Democracy is something America has never really practiced. Because the Founding Fathers hated two things: monarchy and democracy. They wanted a republic, a replica of the Roman or Venetian republics. They didn't even like the etymology of the word "democracy."

I don't want to get too nuanced, but we have the electoral college in the United States and that means we don't have direct democracy.

America has never been a pure democracy and majoritarianism has always been as much feared as monarchism.

There are elements of democracy in votes here and there in America. But in the actual structure of the government, we're a representative republic.

Thank God for the founding fathers, who set up three separate branches of government. And the media acting as the Fourth Estate.

The Senate is the only show in the world where the cash customers have to sit in the balcony.

What is understood by republican government in the United States is the slow and quiet action of society upon itself.

Now that they've finished reading the Constitution out loud, the Teabaggers must call out that group of elitist liberals whose values are so antithetical to theirs. I'm talking of course about the Founding Fathers, who the Teabaggers believe are just like them, but aren't. One is a group of exclusively white men who live in a bygone century, have bad teeth, and think of blacks as 3/5 of a person, and the other are the Founding Fathers.

Democracy is the worst kind of government, I'm sorry. Would you still call yourself a Christian if they elected a new Jesus every four years?

I do what I do. Barack Obama does what politicians do.

You can't understand the Electoral College unless you know what federalism is, and federalism is one of these terms that, in many cases, means the exact opposite of the word as it's currently applied.

Heaven's sakes, there's only one party which I call the Property Party. It's got two wings. One is called the "Republican" and one is called "Democratic." It is the same party so it makes no difference whether a Democrat's elected or a Republican's elected. The ownership remains the same.