“Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”
Parenting
“When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed.”
DeathAll Quotes by Russell Baker
“Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of.”
Dreams“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.”
Best“Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later, he was succeeding a failed Republican president, and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said, probably because he himself didn't know.”
Change“When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed.”
Death“Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.”
Fear“Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.”
Poetry“Anything that isn't opposed by about 40 percent of humanity is either an evil business or so unimportant that it simply doesn't matter.”
Business“Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism.”
Business“The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs.”
Business“There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalism's problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.”
Business“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.”
Age“Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.”
Science“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.”
Car“Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.”
Society“Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.”
Age“You can always tell folks from nonfolks. Folks like to feel good, like to smile for the camera when there's a big photo opportunity for a really good cause.”
Smile“Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.”
Politics“Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.”
Alone“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.”
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