Russell Baker Quotes - Page 2

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• Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.

  Russell Baker

  Summer, Nature, Suffering

  22 Copy quote

• There is no business like show business, Irving Berlin once proclaimed, and thirty years ago he may have been right, but not anymore. Nowadays almost every business is like show business, including politics, which has become more like show business than show business is.

  Russell Baker

  Years, May, Berlin

  Russell Baker (1981). “So this is depravity”, Pocket Books

  5 Copy quote

• Grass is the least rewarding of all status symbols... The grass does nothing but drink money, exhaust energies, crush spirits, destroy sleep, create tensions and interfere with the watching of baseball games, and sprout insolent signs ordering humans to keep off it.

  Russell Baker

  Crush, Baseball, Sleep

  Russell Baker (1965). “All Things Considered”

  5 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

  6 Copy quote

• Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product.

  Russell Baker

  Wall, Journalism, Profit

  "Goodbye to Newspapers?". Article by Russell Baker, www.nybooks.com. August 16, 2007.

  4 Copy quote

• While it is very sturdy of comfortable men to point out that life is unfair, the people it is unfair to are not apt to be morally or philosophically elevated by the announcement. If you are going to preach that unfairness is inescapable for some, good sense suggests that you also accept the inevitability of beastly behavior by people who have to carry the burden.

  Russell Baker

  Men, People, Life Is

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

  4 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.

  Russell Baker

  Funny, Break Up, Work

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

  17 Copy quote

• Americans like fat books and thin women.

  Russell Baker

  Book, Usa, Moral

  20 Copy quote

• The biographer's problem is that he never knows enough. The autobiographer's problem is that he knows too much.

  Russell Baker

  Too Much, Problem, Enough

  8 Copy quote

• Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.

  Russell Baker

  Love, Misery, Company

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

  17 Copy quote

• Journalist: A person with nothing on his mind and the power to express it.

  Russell Baker

  Mind, Journalist, Persons

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

  5 Copy quote

• A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday.

  Russell Baker

  Sunday, America, Political

  "The Morals Charge". The New York Times, May 14, 1974.

  19 Copy quote

• There are good reasons why everybody should heed politicians' advise not to believe the media. One of the best is that the media report what politicians say.

  Russell Baker

  Believe, Media, Reason Why

  4 Copy quote

• What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

  Russell Baker

  Couple, Home, Tree

  29 Copy quote

• Industrial-strength foolishness sets in-in males, at least-at about the age of 18. This is why the military prefers males in the 18-to-25-year-old range when there's combat to be done.

  Russell Baker

  Military, Years, Age

  6 Copy quote

• Etiquette is the grease that makes it possible for all of us to rub together without unnecessary overheating.

  Russell Baker

  Grease, Together, Moral

  5 Copy quote

• A railroad station? That was sort of a primitive airport, only you didn't have to take a cab 20 miles out of town to reach it.

  Russell Baker

  Airports, Railroads, Towns

  "Inside the Suit, a Man!". The New York Times Opinion Page, www.nytimes.com. November 05, 1986.

  5 Copy quote

• It was dramatic to watch my grandmother decapitate a turkey with an ax the day before Thanksgiving. Nowadays the expense of hiring grandmothers for the ax work would probably qualify all turkeys so honored with gourmet status.

  Russell Baker

  Food, Grandmother, Funny Thanksgiving

  9 Copy quote

• It is fitting that yesteryear's swashbuckling newspaper reporter has turned into today's solemn young sobersides nursing a glass of watered white wine after a day of toiling over computer databases in a smoke-free, noise-free newsroom.

  Russell Baker

  Wine, Nursing, White

  17 Copy quote

• People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.

  Russell Baker

  Funny, Sarcastic, People

  "The Sport of Counting Each Other Out" in The New York Times, en.wikiquote.org. November 2, 1967.

  10 Copy quote

• 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

• Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.

  Russell Baker

  Attitude, Speak English, Long

  Russell Baker (1990). “There's a country in my cellar”, William Morrow & Company

  5 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

  4 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

  5 Copy quote

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