Quotes by Russell Baker

“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.”

“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...”

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

“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.”

“One of the many burdens of the person professing Christianity has always been the odium likely to be heaped upon him by fellow Christians quick to smell out, denounce and punish fraud, hypocrisy an...”

“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.”

“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...”

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

“Inanimate objects can be 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.”

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

“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 abou...”

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

“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.”

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

“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.”

“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.”

“Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.”

“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.”

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