Quotes by Russell Baker

So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He cant even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned but give him a little metal a few chemicals some wire and 20 or 30 billion dollars and vroom! There he is up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.

Ive had an unhappy life thank God.

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

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

When compelled to cook I produce a meal that would make a sword swallower gag.

Roosevelts declaration that Americans had nothing to fear but fear itself was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong.

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

Those who remember Washingtons cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagans intervention. People interested in foreign policy were astonished when in 1985 he met alone at Geneva - alone, not a single strategic thinker at his elbow! - with the Soviet Communist master Gorbachev.

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 dont work, those that break down and those that get lost.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

Listen once in a while. Its amazing what you can hear.

There is a growing literature about the multitude of journalisms problems, but most of it is concerned with the editorial side of the business, possibly because most people competent to write about journalism are not comfortable writing about finance.

Reporters thrive on the worlds 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 theres 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 OHare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.