Russell Baker
72 quotes
Biography
Russell Wayne Baker was an American journalist, narrator, writer of Pulitzer Prize-winning satirical commentary and self-critical prose, and author of the Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up (1982). He was a columnist for The New York Times for 36 years, and hosted eleven seasons of the PBS show Masterpiece Theatre.
"Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong."
"The only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn't require any."
"Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it."
"Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder."
"An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong."
"The cruel law of life is that a solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems than you have to."
"In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses."
"People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure."
"It seems to be a law of American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic."
"Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things."
"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."
"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."
"In America nothing dies easier than tradition."
"The best thing about being President is that it gets you out of American life. I don't know what the theory is behind this, but it is a fact. The first thing we do with a President is shunt him off to a siding where nothing American can ever happen to him."
"We watched some of the movie. It was shocking. Sex is apparently hard labor. Various persons supported crushing weights in agonizing positions for what seemed like endless blocks of time. Exhausted men grunted and toiled like movers trying to get a refrigerator into a fifth floor walk-up."
"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?"
"Americans treat history like a cookbook. Whenever they are uncertain what to do next, they turn to history and look up the proper recipe, invariably designated "the lesson of history.""
"Urban people, of course, are terribly scared nowadays. They may yearn for society, but it is risky to go around talking to strangers, for a lot of reasons, one being that people are so accustomed not to have many human contacts that they are afraid they may find out they really prefer life that way."
"Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty."
"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."
"This may be why New Yorkers instinctively avoid making eye contact with each other in crowded places, why they "look right through you," as dismayed visitors often complain. They are not looking right through you at all; they are discreetly avoiding an intrusion into your space. They sense the danger in a place where a one-degree temperature rise can mean an explosion."
"The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep."
"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."
"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."
"All politicians are humble, and seldom let you forget it. They go around the country boasting about their humility. They are proud of their humility. Many are downright arrogant about their humility and insist that it qualifies them to be President."