“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.”
HumorAll Quotes by Russell Baker
“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“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“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“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“Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder.”
Humor“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“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“Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.”
Amazing“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“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“A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.”
History“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“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“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“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.”
Age“Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.”
Parenting“Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism.”
Business“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