Russell Baker Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• My natural instinct after doing something shameful is not to rush into the street boasting about it but to put on dark glasses and head for the next county, hoping nobody notices I've been in the neighborhood.

  Russell Baker

  Dark, Glasses, Natural Instinct

  4 Copy quote

• The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs.

  Russell Baker

  Jobs, Office, Speech

  5 Copy quote

• Letter writing was clearly important to Reagan. Even as president he kept dashing off letters to friends, pen pals, media people, statesmen, critics, and the kind of people who write to presidents never expecting a reply.

  Russell Baker

  Writing, Media, People

  16 Copy quote

• Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life.

  Russell Baker

  Background Noise, Journalism, Backgrounds

  6 Copy quote

• Gerald Boyd was a classic specimen of the self-made man. Born poor, he worked and studied his way up out of poverty under the guidance of his widowed grandmother.

  Russell Baker

  Grandmother, Men, Self

  "Russell Baker: Gerald Boyd’s Book On Being Fired From The New York Times", www.huffingtonpost.com. June 8, 2010.

  4 Copy quote

• Every day and in every way, baseball gets fancier. A few more years and they'll be playing on oriental rugs.

  Russell Baker

  Baseball, Years, Way

  5 Copy quote

• Skins tanned to the consistency of well-traveled alligator suitcases.

  Russell Baker

  Consistency, Skins, Suitcases

  4 Copy quote

• Skinny women don't enjoy being told they're skinny nowadays. They enjoy telling you how they got that way, as though starvation were an achievement.

  Russell Baker

  Sex, Achievement, Way

  4 Copy quote

• The lobbies of the new hotels and the Pan American Building exhale a chill as from the unopened Pharaonic tombs... And in their marble labyrinths there is an evil presence that hates warmth and sunlight.

  Russell Baker

  Hate, Evil, Labyrinth

  Russell Baker (1964). “No Cause for Panic”

  6 Copy quote

• I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world.

  Russell Baker

  Lonely, Loneliness, Years

  9 Copy quote

• Now scarcely a week goes by without a news story about the cops swooping down on some adolescent prowler who is as skilled at breaking into computer systems as defense contractors are at breaking into the Federal budget.

  Russell Baker

  News Stories, Modern Life, Defense

  4 Copy quote

• A $10 million windfall? At today's prices, I'd feel almost as rich as I did one day in 1936 when I found a dime on the sidewalk and blew the whole wad on 20 Mary Jane candy bars, a box of jujubes, and a double feature.

  Russell Baker

  One Day, Dimes, Bars

  4 Copy quote

• It was clear soon after his election that Obama, like FDR, wanted to start dealing with the economic crisis immediately after his inauguration.

  Russell Baker

  Election, Economic, Crisis

  4 Copy quote

• Baltimore is permissiveness. The pleasures of the flesh, the table, the bottle, and the purse are tolerated with a civilized understanding.

  Russell Baker

  Understanding, Flesh, Purses

  4 Copy quote

• Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging.

  Russell Baker

  People, Jogging, Serious

  "So This Is Depravity". Book by Russell Baker, 1980.

  4 Copy quote

• Unpleasant questions are being raised about Mother's Day. Is this day necessary? . . . Isn't it bad public policy? . . . No politician with half his senses, which a majority of politicians have, is likely to vote for its abolition, however. As a class, mothers are tender and loving, but as a voting bloc they would not hesitate for an instant to pull the seat out from under any Congressman who suggests that Mother is not entitled to a box of chocolates each year in the middle of May.

  Russell Baker

  Mother, Years, Class

  4 Copy quote

• Research is a scientific activity dedicated to discovering what makes grass green.

  Russell Baker

  Research, Green, Grass

  4 Copy quote

• The dirty work at political conventions is almost always done in the grim hours between midnight and dawn. Hangmen and politicians work best when the human spirit is at its lowest ebb.

  Russell Baker

  Dirty, Government, Political

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

  4 Copy quote

• Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.

  Russell Baker

  Half, Firsts, Educator

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

  5 Copy quote

• In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

  Russell Baker

  America, Tradition, Easier

  "A Little Bones Trouble". The New York Times Opinion Page, www.nytimes.com. May 14, 1991.

  8 Copy quote

• Situation comedy on television has thrived for years on 'canned' laughter, grafted by gaglines by technicians using records of guffawing audiences that have been dead for years.

  Russell Baker

  Laughter, Years, Records

  Russell Baker (1965). “All Things Considered”

  7 Copy quote

• What [man landing on the moon] is doing up there is indulging his obsession with the impossible. The impossible infuriates and tantalizes him. Show him an impossible job and he will reduce it to a possibility so trite that eventually it bores him.

  Russell Baker

  Jobs, Science, Moon

  4 Copy quote

• Schoolteachers seemed determined to persuade me that 'classic' is a synonym for 'narcotic'.

  Russell Baker

  Determined, Classic, Synonym

  4 Copy quote

• You can always tell folks from nonfolks. Folks like to feel good, like to smile for the camera when there's a big photo opportunity for a really good cause.

  Russell Baker

  Smile, Opportunity, Feel Good

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• Ireland really is my problem; the breaking point of the huge suppuration which all British and all European society now is

  Russell Baker

  Point Break, Problem, British

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