“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
“When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.”
CarAll Quotes by Russell Baker
“Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.”
Society“Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder.”
Humor“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“A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.”
History“Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.”
Amazing“Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.”
Poetry“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“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“Americans like fat books and thin women.”
Women“When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.”
Car“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“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.”
Poetry“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“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.”
Poetry“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“Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism.”
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“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“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