Russell Baker Quotes

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

Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century.

Long words, fat talk they may tell us something about ourselves. Has the passion for fat in the language increased as self-confidence has waned?

Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope diamond.

Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories
those that don't work, those that break down, and those that get lost

Americans like fat books and thin women.

The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins.

A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems.

The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.

Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

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

In America nothing dies easier than tradition.

Is fuel efficiency really what we need most desperately? I say that what we really need is a car that can be shot when it breaks down.

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

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.

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

It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.

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

It is safest to shut up and pay, which is what I shall eventually do, though I shall hate having to sell the children.

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

There are no liberals behind steering wheels.

The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don't do it. I have been out there. It is a mess.

It was Queen Elizabeth who made me a foreign correspondent.

The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.

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

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty.

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.

Reality is the only obstacle to happiness.

Humans treat time as a map and always know where they are located on it and respond with the appropriate emotion.

Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.

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

Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.

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.

Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.

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

When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.

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

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

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

I frankly admit to not knowing who I am. This is why I refuse to buy clothes that will tell people who I want them to think I am.

A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.

In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.

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

In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.

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

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.

Serious journalism need not be solemn.

I've had an unhappy life, thank God.

It's always seemed odd to me that after a group of terrorists commits a vile and odious deed they rush messages to the public to claim credit for it.

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

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

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

The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.

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

Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.

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

You can't enjoy light verse with a heavy heart.

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

Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it.

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

What sweeter words can fall on the human ear? It's going to be May all week long.

The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.

Anything that isn't opposed by about 40 percent of humanity is either an evil business or so unimportant that it simply doesn't matter.

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