"Cleanliness becomes more important when godliness is unlikely"
About this Quote
A dirty joke in a pressed shirt, this line distills P. J. O'Rourke's whole project: treat piety as a luxury belief and hygiene as the fallback virtue of a secular age. The wit hinges on the old Protestant saw "cleanliness is next to godliness" and then kicks the ladder away. If godliness is "unlikely" - not just unfashionable, but implausible - cleanliness stops being the quaint companion to holiness and becomes the last respectable proof that you're trying.
The intent is double-edged. On one side, it's a jab at moral systems that outsource ethics to metaphysics: when you can't credibly invoke God, you scramble for something measurable. Clean counters, washed hands, orderly lives. On the other, it's a jab at the modern urge to replace moral seriousness with lifestyle performance. We can argue about sin forever; we can disinfect a countertop in thirty seconds.
Subtext: cleanliness isn't innocence, it's control. It's the virtue that looks like virtue. O'Rourke, a libertarian-leaning journalist with an eye for national neuroses, is pointing at a culture that distrusts grand moral claims but still craves the comfort of righteousness. So it migrates into realms with receipts: sanitation, wellness, minimalism, "adulting". You can be messy in your relationships, complicit in your politics, shallow in your thinking - but if your kitchen gleams, you've got a secular sacrament.
The context is late-20th-century American skepticism, post-religious but not post-judgmental. O'Rourke's punchline lands because it flatters and indicts at once: yes, we're not saints; no, we won't stop pretending.
The intent is double-edged. On one side, it's a jab at moral systems that outsource ethics to metaphysics: when you can't credibly invoke God, you scramble for something measurable. Clean counters, washed hands, orderly lives. On the other, it's a jab at the modern urge to replace moral seriousness with lifestyle performance. We can argue about sin forever; we can disinfect a countertop in thirty seconds.
Subtext: cleanliness isn't innocence, it's control. It's the virtue that looks like virtue. O'Rourke, a libertarian-leaning journalist with an eye for national neuroses, is pointing at a culture that distrusts grand moral claims but still craves the comfort of righteousness. So it migrates into realms with receipts: sanitation, wellness, minimalism, "adulting". You can be messy in your relationships, complicit in your politics, shallow in your thinking - but if your kitchen gleams, you've got a secular sacrament.
The context is late-20th-century American skepticism, post-religious but not post-judgmental. O'Rourke's punchline lands because it flatters and indicts at once: yes, we're not saints; no, we won't stop pretending.
Quote Details
| Topic | Witty One-Liners |
|---|
More Quotes by J. O'Rourke
Add to List
