Alistair Cooke Quotes

Quotes about:

Cooking Country Food Golf War

In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.

Alistair Cooke

Love, Life, Friendship

150 Copy quote
The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.

Alistair Cooke

Best Friend, Christian, Children

77 Copy quote
A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.

Alistair Cooke

Inspirational, Motivational, Positive

Alistair Cooke (2012). “Reporting America”, p.14, The Overlook Press

77 Copy quote
All Presidents start out to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely the presidency. The people are well cured by then of election fever, during which they think they are choosing Moses. In the third year, they look on the man as a sinner and a bumble and begin to poke around for rumors of another Messiah.

Alistair Cooke

Running, Couple, Men

50 Copy quote
When television came roaring in after the war (World War II) they did a little school survey asking children which they preferred and why - television or radio. And there was this 7-year-old boy who said he preferred radio "because the pictures were better.

Alistair Cooke

Children, War, School

33 Copy quote
Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.

Alistair Cooke

Spring, People, Generosity

"Science, Religion, and the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence". Book by David Wilkinson, p. 3, August 1, 2013.

27 Copy quote
I believe Hollywood is the most effective and disastrous propaganda factory there has ever been in the history of human beings.

Alistair Cooke

Believe, Hollywood, Propaganda

18 Copy quote
I prefer radio to TV because the pictures are better.

Alistair Cooke

Radio, Tvs

"Why listening to football on the radio beats watching it on TV" by Tony Cowards, www.theguardian.com. November 22, 2016.

14 Copy quote
Liberty is the luxury of self-discipline, that those nations historically who have failed to discipline themselves have had discipline imposed by others.

Alistair Cooke

Self, Luxury, Discipline

16 Copy quote
They have been playing golf for 800 years and nobody has satisfactorily said why.

Alistair Cooke

Golf, Years, Said

Alistair Cooke (2015). “Fun & Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements”, p.50, Open Road Media

23 Copy quote
Although the Jeffersonian Law ("All men are created equal") is the first article of the American faith, the facts of American life have demonstrated for some time now that it is an irksome faith to live by.

Alistair Cooke

Equality, Men, Law

Alistair Cooke (2014). “America Observed: From the 1940s to the 1980s”, p.141, Open Road Media

26 Copy quote
As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later

Alistair Cooke

Years, Two, Enthusiasm

15 Copy quote
To watch an American on a beach, or crowding into a subway, or buying a theatre ticket, or sitting at home with his radio on, tells you something about one aspect of the American character: the capacity to withstand a great deal of outside interference, so to speak; a willing acceptance of frenzy which, though it's never self-conscious, amounts to a willingness to let other people have and assert their own lively, and even offensive, character. They are a tough race in this.

Alistair Cooke

Beach, Character, Home

"Letter from America, 1946-2004".

19 Copy quote
Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence.

Alistair Cooke

Intelligence, Curiosity, Wheeling

58 Copy quote
I wrote to Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I said: "Here is the sentence once written by the immortal Bobby Jones. I thought you might like to have it done in needlepoint and mounted in a suitable frame to hang over Little John's bed. It says, The rewards of golf - and of life, too, I expect - are worth very little if you don't play the game by the etiquette as well as by the rules." I never heard from Mr. McEnroe, Senior. I can only conclude that the letter went astray.

Alistair Cooke

Senior, Golf, Games

21 Copy quote
The best thing about Eisenhower's Presidency was his Jeffersonian conviction that there should be as little government and as much golf as possible.

Alistair Cooke

Golf, Government, Littles

Alistair Cooke (1996). “Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements”, p.63, Arcade Publishing

21 Copy quote
The Scots say that Nature itself dictated that golf should be played by the seashore. Rather, the Scots saw in the eroded sea coasts a cheap battleground on which they could whip their fellow men in a game based on the Calvinist doctrine that man is meant to suffer here below and never more than when he goes out to enjoy himself.

Alistair Cooke

Golf, Men, Sea

Alistair Cooke (1996). “Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements”, p.114, Arcade Publishing

4 Copy quote
It used to be said that you had to know what was happening in America because it gave us a glimpse of our future. Today, the rest of America, and after that Europe, had better heed what happens in California, for it already reveals the type of civilisation that is in store for all of us.

Alistair Cooke

Europe, California, America

7 Copy quote
It's an acting job - acting natural.

Alistair Cooke

Jobs, Acting, Natural

7 Copy quote
People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.

Alistair Cooke

Country, Oysters, America

15 Copy quote
Texas does not, like any other region, simply have indigenous dishes. It proclaims them. It congratulates you, on your arrival, at having escaped from the slop pails of the other 49 states.

Alistair Cooke

Food, Texas, Cooking

17 Copy quote
Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks.

Alistair Cooke

Greek, Hollywood, Factories

13 Copy quote
If computers take over, it will serve us right.

Alistair Cooke

Computer, Over It, Ifs

9 Copy quote
America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence.

Alistair Cooke

Country, Race, America

11 Copy quote
To get an elementary grasp of the game of golf, a human must learn, by endless practice, a continuous and subtle series of highly unnatural movements, involving about sixty-four muscles, that result in a seemingly natural swing, taking two seconds to begin and end.

Alistair Cooke

Golf, Swings, Practice

Alistair Cooke (1996). “Fun and Games with Alistair Cooke: On Sport and Other Amusements”, p.62, Arcade Publishing

7 Copy quote

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Born: November 20, 1908
Died: March 30, 2004
Occupation: Journalist
Cite this Page: Citation

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