Russell Baker Quotes

Quotes about:

• Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

  Russell Baker

  Peace, War, History

  Russell Baker (1992). “Poor Russell's almanac”

  51 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Education, Learned Person, Information

  70 Copy quote

• The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any.

  Russell Baker

  Real, Work, Writing

  Russell Baker (2011). “Growing Up”, p.157, RosettaBooks

  44 Copy quote

• So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.

  Russell Baker

  Science, Moon, Men

  1969 Editoral pages, the New York Times, 21 Jul.

  6 Copy quote

• Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.

  Russell Baker

  "Top 10 Commencement Speeches". content.time.com.

  13 Copy quote

• Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

  Russell Baker

  Happiness, Taken, Goal

  8 Copy quote

• The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.

  Russell Baker

  Inspirational, Funny, Travel

  Russell Baker (1965). “All Things Considered”

  34 Copy quote

• The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don't do it. I have been out there. It is a mess....

  Russell Baker

  Giving, Advice, Going Out

  "The funniest commencement speeches" by Valerie Strauss, voices.washingtonpost.com. May 9, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.

  Russell Baker

  People, Car, Yesteryear

  Russell Baker (1992). “Poor Russell's almanac”

  57 Copy quote

• The people who say: 'You are what you eat' have always seemed addled to me. In my opinion, you are what you think, and if you don't think, you can eat all the meat in Kansas City and still be nothing but a vegetable.

  Russell Baker

  Thinking, Vegetables, Cities

  Russell Baker (1990). “The rescue of Miss Yaskell, and other pipe dreams”, Plume

  4 Copy quote

• Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

  Russell Baker

  Funny, Life, Seize The Day

  18 Copy quote

• Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.

  Russell Baker

  Reality, Obstacles

  4 Copy quote

• Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

  Russell Baker

  Children, Growing Up, Parenting

  17 Copy quote

• We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism, we worship acquisitiveness, we commercialize art, we cherish success and then we bark at the young about the gentle arts of the spirit. The kids know that if we really valued learning, we would pay our teachers what we pay our lawyers and stockbrokers. If we valued art, we would not measure it by its capacity to produce profits. If we regarded literature as important, we would remove it from the celebrity sweepstakes and spend a little money on our libraries.

  Russell Baker

  Teacher, Art, Ambition

  3 Copy quote

• The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.

  Russell Baker

  Communication, Thought Provoking, Miracle

  16 Copy quote

• The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.

  Russell Baker

  Country, Men, People

  Russell Baker (1983). “So This Is Depravity”, Pocket Books

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Birthday, Children, Parent

  Russell Baker (2011). “Growing Up”, p.17, RosettaBooks

  7 Copy quote

• After that [father's death] I never cried with any real conviction, nor expected much of anyone's God except indifference, nor loved deeply without fear that it would cost me dearly in pain. At the age of five I had become a skeptic and began to sense that any happiness that came my way might be the prelude to some grim cosmic joke.

  Russell Baker

  Pain, Father, Real

  Russell Baker (1984). “Growing up”, Signet

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Dream, Escaping, Dozen

  54 Copy quote

• It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.

  Russell Baker

  Law, Wallets, Seems

  19 Copy quote

• The charm of television entertainment is its ability to bridge the chasm between dinner and bedtime without mental distraction.

  Russell Baker

  Bridges, Television, Dinner

  Russell Baker (1965). “All Things Considered”

  8 Copy quote

• In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.

  Russell Baker

  Writing, Play, Roles

  10 Copy quote

• Serious journalism need not be solemn.

  Russell Baker

  Serious, Needs, Journalism

  8 Copy quote

• When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope diamond.

  Russell Baker

  Confused, Parent, Peas

  Russell Baker, William Knowlton Zinsser (1998). “Inventing the Truth: The Art and Craft of Memoir”, p.26, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  4 Copy quote

• There was scarcely a woman alive, it seemed, who could resist the urge to haul men down onto beds, car seats, kitchen floors, dining-room tables, park grass, parlor sofas, or packing crates, entwine warm thighs around them, and pant in ecstasy.

  Russell Baker

  Sex, Men, Car

  Russell Baker (1983). “Growing Up”, Plume

  6 Copy quote

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