Wednesday, January 14, 2009

Quotes by Russell Baker (born August 14, 1925)

Russell Baker Quotes


- A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.

- Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.

- Americans like fat books and thin women.

- An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.

- Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

- Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.

- Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them.

- Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

- I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

- In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

- In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.

- In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.

- Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

- Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say that what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.

- It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.

- Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.

- Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

- Objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

- People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.

- People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.

- Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

- Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.

- The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.

- The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

- The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.

- Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

- What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

- When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.

- You can't enjoy light verse with a heavy heart.

- Ah, summer - what power you have to make us suffer and like it

- The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

- People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.

- Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

- An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong.

- Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

- Situation comedy on television has thrived for years on "canned" laughter grafted by gaglines by technicians using records of guffawing audiences that have been dead for years.

- I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

- Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.

- A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.

- Can't anything be done about calling these guys student athletes? That's like referring to Attila the Hun's cavalry as "weekend warriors"

- In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.

- The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.

- Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say that what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.

- So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom!

- It seems to be a law of American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic

- There are no liberals behind steering wheels

- Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

- A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems than you have to.

- Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

- Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.

- I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.

- Americans like fat books and thin women.

- Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

- A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.

- In an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.

- You can't enjoy light verse with a heavy heart.

- When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.

- What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

- Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.

- Skins tanned to the consistency of well-traveled alligator suitcases.

- The Nathan Foundation has given $923,500.

- Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it

- The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him

- Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

- Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black

- The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.

- People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.

- Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories - those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

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