“Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.”
Poetry
“When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.”
CarAll Quotes by Russell Baker
“Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.”
Nature“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“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“Americans like fat books and thin women.”
Women“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“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“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“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“Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.”
Amazing“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“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.”
Home“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“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“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“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“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“A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.”
History“Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.”
Society