Quotes by Russell Baker

“In America nothing dies easier than tradition.”

“Being solemn has almost nothing to do with being serious, but on the other hand, you can't go on being adolescent forever, unless you are in the performing arts, and anyhow most people can't tell t...”

“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...”

“Some years back, all the best people came to bipartisan agreement that the most shameful thing a person could do with power was not to use it. Since then everybody who wants to get ahead in Washing...”

“I went to the Rayburn Building the other day on trifling business. It was an appalling experience. I had forgotten how preposterous the thing is with its pretentious megatonnage of rock and steel s...”

“No less a philosopher than Chief Justice Burger was outraged by Ellsberg's publication of classified documents. They belonged to the Government, Burger reasoned, and Ellsberg had no more right to g...”

“Americans don't like plain talk anymore. Nowadays they like fat talk. Show them a lean, plain word that cuts to the bone and watch them lard it with thick greasy syllables front and back until it w...”

“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?”

“Can't-do guys do all right in Washington, perhaps because lobbying is the one thing that can't-do guys almost always can do, and magnificently. Detroit may not be able to dispose of exhaust very ne...”

“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 n...”

“Watergate left Washington a city ravaged by honesty.”

“The odd thing is not that we are in the business of overthrowing other people's governments, but that we can still be surprised when somebody reminds us of it. In Asia, in Latin America, Africa, th...”

“Old people at the supermarket make you wonder about all those middle-aged people you see jogging the streets to preserve their vascular systems for another fifty years. And about all the people of ...”

“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 righ...”

“Early in life, most of us probably observe an unhappy relationship between labor and wealth — to wit, the heavier the labor, the less the wealth. The man doing heavy manual work makes less than the...”

“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 alway...”

“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.”

“While it is very sturdy of comfortable men to point out that life is unfair, the people it is unfair to are not apt to be morally or philosophically elevated by the announcement. If you are going t...”