Russell Baker Quotes - Page 5

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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.

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

Russell Baker

Research, Green, Grass

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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

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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

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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.

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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

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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

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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

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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

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The young cult of sociology, needing a language, invented one. There are many dead languages, but the sociologists' is the only language that was dead at birth.

Russell Baker

Language, Birth, Sociology

Russell Baker (2014). “So This is Depravity”, p.285, Diversion Books

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Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty.

Russell Baker

Honesty, Cities, Watergate

Russell Baker (2014). “So This is Depravity”, p.107, Diversion Books

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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

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When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed.

Russell Baker

New Beginnings, Opportunity, People

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Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

Russell Baker

School, Poetry, Poetry Is

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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

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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.

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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”

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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

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

Russell Baker

Determined, Classic, Synonym

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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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There's so much spectating going on that a lot of us never get around to living.

Russell Baker

Life, Live Life

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Of all the people expressing their mental vacuity, none has a better excuse for an empty head than the newspaperman: If he pauses to restock his brain, he invites onrushing deadlines to trample him flat. Broadcasting the contents of empty minds is what most of us do most of the time, and nobody more relentlessly than I.

Russell Baker

Empty Mind, People, Brain

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

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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

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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

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Born: August 14, 1925
Occupation: Writer
Cite this Page: Citation

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