Russell Baker Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.

  Russell Baker

  Running, New York, Cities

  9 Copy quote

• Goat cheese... produced a bizarre eating era when sensible people insisted that this miserable cheese produced by these miserable creatures reared on miserable hardscrabble earth was actually superior to the magnificent creamy cheeses of the noblest dairy animals bred in the richest green valleys of the earth.

  Russell Baker

  Food, Animal, People

  9 Copy quote

• There are no liberals behind steering wheels.

  Russell Baker

  Wheels, Steering, Behinds

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

  5 Copy quote

• The French fried potato has become an inescapable horror in almost every public eating place in the country. 'French fries', say the menus, but they are not French fries any longer. They are a furry-textured substance with the taste of plastic wood.

  Russell Baker

  Country, Food, America

  8 Copy quote

• The early commentators who put down the pre-presidential Roosevelt as an empty-headed young lightweight, all ambition and no talent, now seem comically wrong to a modern book-reading, movie-going, television-watching, legend-loving American public conditioned to think of him as one of the presidential giants on the order of Washington and Lincoln.

  Russell Baker

  Book, Reading, Ambition

  6 Copy quote

• Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.

  Russell Baker

  May, Solemnity, Caution

  8 Copy quote

• The twentieth century seems afflicted by a gigantic... power failure. Powerlessness and the sense of powerlessness may be the environmental disease of the age.

  Russell Baker

  Environmental, Society, Age

  5 Copy quote

• The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him.

  Russell Baker

  President, Firsts, Facts

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

  4 Copy quote

• How many more years will our educators continue to lecture us on the evils of whipping children until they bring home high grades? Year after year we listen to these fellows tell us that it is not the grade that counts but the development of the child's personality. After the lecture they go back to all the best schools and reject our children because they have C averages.

  Russell Baker

  Education, Children, Home

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

  6 Copy quote

• It takes great self-confidence to write a newspaper column. Some might say it takes arrogance. Be that as it may, my willingness to pronounce on a great many matters of which I have little or no knowledge is one of my prime qualifications for this trade.

  Russell Baker

  Writing, Self Confidence, Arrogance

  10 Copy quote

• Windows 95 is what Rube Goldberg would have designed if he'd studied cartooning at M.I.T.

  Russell Baker

  Inspirational, Window, Ifs

  5 Copy quote

• Urban people, of course, are terribly scared nowadays. They may yearn for society, but it is risky to go around talking to strangers, for a lot of reasons, one being that people are so accustomed not to have many human contacts that they are afraid they may find out they really prefer life that way.

  Russell Baker

  Talking, People, May

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

  5 Copy quote

• Scientists have been struck by the fact that things that break down virtually never get lost, while things that get lost hardly ever break down.

  Russell Baker

  Science, Facts, Breaking Down

  “The Plot Against People” by Russell Baker, www.ign.com. April 14, 2006.

  8 Copy quote

• A skillful playwright might have a good time with the story of the assassination of President William McKinley, and especially with the three most flamboyant political figures involved: Mark Hanna, Theodore Roosevelt, and Emma Goldman.

  Russell Baker

  Political, President, Stories

  4 Copy quote

• Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism.

  Russell Baker

  Journalism

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Years, President, Might

  4 Copy quote

• A man doesn't amount to something because he has been successful at a third-rate career like journalism. It is evidence, that's all: evidence that if he buckled down and worked hard, he might some day do something really worth doing.

  Russell Baker

  Successful, Men, Careers

  6 Copy quote

• The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.

  Russell Baker

  Men, Goal, Inanimate Objects

  9 Copy quote

• Feel good about linking hands in human chain for good causes.

  Russell Baker

  Hands, Feel Good, Causes

  5 Copy quote

• People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.

  Russell Baker

  Justice, People, Age

  8 Copy quote

• Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder.

  Russell Baker

  Fun, People, Ribald

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  Russell Baker

  Writing, People, Literature

  4 Copy quote

• After two years studying what rewrite men did with the facts I phoned them, I knew that journalism was essentially a task of stringing together seamlessly an endless series of cliches.

  Russell Baker

  Men, Years, Two

  Russell Baker (1984). “Growing Up”, Signet Book

  4 Copy quote

• Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.

  Russell Baker

  War, Thinking, Opposites

  4 Copy quote

• Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history.

  Russell Baker

  Looks, Lessons, Recipes

  Russell Baker (2014). “So This is Depravity”, p.75, Diversion Books

  4 Copy quote

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