A. J. Liebling Quotes

Quotes about:

• People everywhere confuse what they read in newspapers with news.

  A. J. Liebling

  Print Media, People, Political

  The New Yorker, en.wikiquote.org. April 7, 1956.

  60 Copy quote

• Freedom of the press is guaranteed only to those who own one.

  A. J. Liebling

  Funny, Media Control, Politics

  New Yorker, 14 May 1960

  39 Copy quote

• An Englishman teaching an American about food is like the blind leading the one-eyed.

  A. J. Liebling

  Travel, Food, Teaching

  44 Copy quote

• The primary requisite for writing well about food is a good appetite.

  A. J. Liebling

  Food, Writing, Cooking

  A. J. Liebling (2005). “Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer”, p.27, Macmillan

  33 Copy quote

• In the light of what Proust wrote with so mild a stimulus, it is the world's loss that he did not have a heartier appetite. On a dozen Gardiner's Island oysters, a bowl of clam chowder, a peck of steamers, some bay scallops, three sauteed soft-shelled crabs, a few ears of fresh picked corn, a thin swordfish steak of generous area, a pair of lobsters, and a Long Island Duck, he might have written a masterpiece.

  A. J. Liebling

  Food, Loss, Light

  11 Copy quote

• The function of the press in society is to inform, but its role in society is to make money.

  A. J. Liebling

  Anger, Society, Roles

  19 Copy quote

• I can write better than anybody who can write faster, and I can write faster than anybody who can write better.

  A. J. Liebling

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

  27 Copy quote

• It is an anomaly that information, the one thing most necessary to our survival as choosers of our own way, should be a commodity subject to the same merchandising rules as chewing gum.

  A. J. Liebling

  Knowledge, Survival, Anomalies

  8 Copy quote

• The world isn't going backward, if you can just stay young enough to remember what it was really like when you were really young.

  A. J. Liebling

  World, Remember, Enough

  A. J. Liebling (2005). “Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer”, p.411, Macmillan

  12 Copy quote

• I met a keen observer who gave me a tip: 'If you run across a restaurant where you often see priests eating with priests, or sporting girls with sporting girls, you may be confident that it is good. Those are two classes of people who like to eat well and get their money's worth.'

  A. J. Liebling

  Girl, Running, Class

  A. J. Liebling (2016). “Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris”, p.59, North Point Press

  16 Copy quote

• The only way to write is well and how you do it is your own damn business.

  A. J. Liebling

  Writing, Way, Damn

  11 Copy quote

• Cynicism is often the shamefaced product of inexperience.

  A. J. Liebling

  Inexperience, Cynicism, Products

  A. J. Liebling (2005). “Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer”, p.20, Macmillan

  6 Copy quote

• I take a grave view of the press. It is the weak slat under the bed of democracy

  A. J. Liebling

  Freedom, Media Control, Views

  8 Copy quote

• Inconsiderate to the last, Josef Stalin, a man who never had to meet a deadline, had the bad taste to die in installments.

  A. J. Liebling

  Men, Lasts, Taste

  A. J. Liebling (2005). “Just Enough Liebling: Classic Work by the Legendary New Yorker Writer”, p.524, Macmillan

  20 Copy quote

• Our hypothetical rich client might even have ordered a Pommard, because it was listed at a higher price...He would have never learned [about other wines]. A man who is rich in his adolescence is almost doomed to be a dilettante at table. This is not because all millionaires are stupid but because they are not impelled to experiment.

  A. J. Liebling

  Stupid, Wine, Men

  7 Copy quote

• The fighter (like the writer) must stand alone. If he loses he cannot call an executive conference and throw off on a vice president or the assistant sales manager. He is consequently resented by fractional characters who cannot live outside an organization.

  A. J. Liebling

  Character, Organization, President

  A. J. Liebling (2014). “The Sweet Science”, p.5, Macmillan

  9 Copy quote

• A Louisiana politician can't afford to let his animosities carry him away, and still less his principles, although there is seldom difficulty in that department.

  A. J. Liebling

  Principles, Louisiana, Politician

  Abbott Joseph Liebling (1970). “The Earl of Louisiana”, p.19, LSU Press

  9 Copy quote

• I had an attack of the gout two days before pulling out, and I went limping off to the war instead of coming limping back from it.

  A. J. Liebling

  War, Two, Gout

  9 Copy quote

• The science of booby-trapping has taken a good deal of the fun out of following hot on the enemy's heels.

  A. J. Liebling

  Fun, Taken, Enemy

  A. J. Liebling (2004). “Mollie and Other War Pieces”, p.121, U of Nebraska Press

  4 Copy quote

• I can write better than anyone who can write faster.

  A. J. Liebling

  Writing, Faster, I Can

  9 Copy quote

• Freedom of the press belongs to the man who owns one.

  A. J. Liebling

  Men, Media, He Man

  10 Copy quote

• Any city may have one period of magnificence, like Boston or New Orleans or San Francisco, but it takes a real one to keep renewing itself until the past is perennially forgotten.

  A. J. Liebling

  Real, Past, New Orleans

  11 Copy quote

• News is like the tilefish which appears in great schools off the Atlantic Coast some years and then vanishes, no one knows whither or for how long. Newspapers might employ these periods searching for the breeding grounds of news, but they prefer to fill up with stories about Kurdled Kurds or Calvin Coolidge, until the banks close or a Hitler marches, when they are as surprised as their readers.

  A. J. Liebling

  School, Years, Long

  7 Copy quote

• The country's present supply of foreign news depends largely on how best a number of dry goods merchants in New York think they can sell underwear.

  A. J. Liebling

  Country, New York, Thinking

  4 Copy quote

• No ascetic can be considered reliably sane.

  A. J. Liebling

  Sane

  A. J. Liebling (2016). “Between Meals: An Appetite for Paris”, p.73, North Point Press

  7 Copy quote

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