Russell Baker
People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.
Russell BakerPeople who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.
Russell BakerLife is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's find," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.
Russell BakerIs 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.
Russell BakerThe goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.
Russell BakerI 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.
Russell BakerInanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories - those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
Russell BakerThe 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.
Russell BakerUsually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
Russell BakerMisery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it.
Russell BakerLive by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.
Russell BakerSo there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! t
Russell BakerAmericans like fat books and thin women.
Russell BakerIt seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.
Russell BakerCaution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.
Russell BakerIn an age when the fashion is to be in love with yourself, confessing to be in love with somebody else is an admission of unfaithfulness to one's beloved.
Russell BakerWhen it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Russell BakerYou can't enjoy light verse with a heavy heart.
Russell BakerIn America nothing dies easier than tradition.
Russell BakerAh, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.
Russell BakerNew York is the only city in the world where you can get deliberately run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.
Russell BakerChildren rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them.
Russell BakerAnticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.
Russell BakerReporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.
Russell Baker
