Russell Baker Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems.

  Russell Baker

  Two, Problem, Solve

  Russell Baker (1965). “All Things Considered”

  20 Copy quote

• Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.

  Russell Baker

  Discovery, Class, Television

  Russell Baker (1991). “There's a Country in My Cellar”, Avon Books

  8 Copy quote

• A person whose job is deep thinking about atomic war would no more call a 'megadeath' a 'million corpses' than an embalmer would refer to a 'loved one' as a 'stiff.'

  Russell Baker

  Jobs, War, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• Sending grown-ups up the wall is one of the things adolescence is all about. A few years ago it was done with rock 'n' roll music. Now at least they can do it quietly with a home computer.

  Russell Baker

  Wall, Home, Years

  5 Copy quote

• A man writing a letter is a man in the act of thinking, and it was an exercise Reagan obviously enjoyed. After his first meeting with Gorbachev, for example, he sent a 'Dear Murph' letter about it to his old friend George Murphy, a former senator and actor who had once played Reagan's father in a film.

  Russell Baker

  Father, Writing, Exercise

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Birthday, Fashion, Love You

  27 Copy quote

• It is safest to shut up and pay, which is what I shall eventually do, though I shall hate having to sell the children.

  Russell Baker

  Children, Hate, Pay

  6 Copy quote

• Long words, fat talk they may tell us something about ourselves. Has the passion for fat in the language increased as self-confidence has waned?

  Russell Baker

  Passion, Self Confidence, Long

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

  5 Copy quote

• Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost. The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately to defeat him, and the three major classifications are based on the method each object uses to achieve its purpose. As a general rule, any object capable of breaking down at the moment when it is most needed will do so.

  Russell Baker

  Men, Goal, Inanimate Objects

  "The Plot Against People," The New York Times, June 18, 1968.

  6 Copy quote

• One of the many burdens of the person professing Christianity has always been the odium likely to be heaped upon him by fellow Christians quick to smell out, denounce and punish fraud, hypocrisy and general unworthiness among those who assert the faith. In ruder days, disputes about what constituted a fully qualified Christian often led to sordid quarrels in which the disputants tortured, burned and hanged each other in the conviction that torture, burning and hanging were Christian things to do.

  Russell Baker

  Christian, Smell, Hypocrisy

  6 Copy quote

• I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families--sometimes into no family at all. When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.

  Russell Baker

  Family, Children, Confused

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

  15 Copy quote

• Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.

  Russell Baker

  School, Yale, Ivy

  9 Copy quote

• It's always seemed odd to me that after a group of terrorists commits a vile and odious deed they rush messages to the public to claim credit for it.

  Russell Baker

  Credit, Deeds, Messages

  6 Copy quote

• I've had an unhappy life, thank God.

  Russell Baker

  Adversity, Happy Life, Thank God

  6 Copy quote

• It was Queen Elizabeth who made me a foreign correspondent.

  Russell Baker

  Queens, Queen Elizabeth, Made

  5 Copy quote

• I frankly admit to not knowing who I am. This is why I refuse to buy clothes that will tell people who I want them to think I am.

  Russell Baker

  Thinking, Who I Am, Clothes

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

  7 Copy quote

• Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.

  Russell Baker

  Publicity, Live By, Dies

  10 Copy quote

• When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.

  Russell Baker

  Clever, Two, Car

  11 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Loss, Airports, Littles

  13 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Funny, Science, Car

  Russell Baker (1991). “There's a Country in My Cellar”, Avon Books

  8 Copy quote

• In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.

  Russell Baker

  Sports, America, Opiates

  "The Muscular Opiate". "The New York Times", October 3, 1967.

  10 Copy quote

• The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.

  Russell Baker

  Essence, Ideas, Quality

  Russell Baker (1991). “There's a Country in My Cellar”, Avon Books

  6 Copy quote

• Humans treat time as a map and always know where they are located on it and respond with the appropriate emotion.

  Russell Baker

  Maps, Emotion, Treats

  5 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Unimportant Things, Evil, Humanity

  "Observer; Don't Worry, Feel Good". www.nytimes.com. April 21, 1990.

  8 Copy quote

• The sinister nature of the American soil is apparent in places like Gettysburg. Fertilize it with the blood of heros, and it brings forth a frozen-custard stand.

  Russell Baker

  Peace, War, Hero

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

  12 Copy quote

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