Quotes by Russell Baker

About Russell Baker:

Russell Wayne Baker is an American writer known for his satirical commentary and self-critical prose, as well as for his Pulitzer Prize-winning autobiography Growing Up (1982).
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

It is fitting that yesteryear's swashbuckling newspaper reporter has turned into today's solemn young sobersides nursing a glass of watered white wine after a day of toiling over computer databases in a smoke-free, noise-free newsroom.

Russell Baker

American foreign policy had still not recovered from its victory over communism when George W. Bush and Condoleezza Rice took over at the White House in 2001.

Russell Baker

Gerald Boyd was a classic specimen of the self-made man. Born poor, he worked and studied his way up out of poverty under the guidance of his widowed grandmother.

Russell Baker

My natural instinct after doing something shameful is not to rush into the street boasting about it but to put on dark glasses and head for the next county, hoping nobody notices I've been in the neighborhood.

Russell Baker

Letter writing was clearly important to Reagan. Even as president he kept dashing off letters to friends, pen pals, media people, statesmen, critics, and the kind of people who write to presidents never expecting a reply.

Russell Baker

A man writing a letter is a man in the act of thinking, and it was an exercise Reagan obviously enjoyed. After his first meeting with Gorbachev, for example, he sent a 'Dear Murph' letter about it to his old friend George Murphy, a former senator and...

Russell Baker

People seem to enjoy things more when they know a lot of other people have been left out of the pleasure.

Russell Baker

It's always seemed odd to me that after a group of terrorists commits a vile and odious deed they rush messages to the public to claim credit for it.

Russell Baker

People who say you're just as old as you feel are all wrong, fortunately.

Russell Baker

Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.

Russell Baker

It was Queen Elizabeth who made me a foreign correspondent.

Russell Baker

Serious journalism need not be solemn.

Russell Baker

When speaking aloud, you punctuate constantly — with body language. Your listener hears commas, dashes, question marks, exclamation points, quotation marks as you shout, whisper, pause, wave your arms, roll your eyes, wrinkle your brow. In writing,...

Russell Baker

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 and general unworthiness among those who assert the fai...

Russell Baker

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.

Russell Baker

New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.

Russell Baker

Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in thei...

Russell Baker

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 about journalism are not comfortable writing about financ...

Russell Baker

Anything that isn't opposed by about 40 percent of humanity is either an evil business or so unimportant that it simply doesn't matter.

Russell Baker

Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism.

Russell Baker

What the New Yorker calls home would seem like a couple of closets to most Americans, yet he manages not only to live there but also to grow trees and cockroaches right on the premises.

Russell Baker

Author Bio

  • NameRussell Baker
  • Descriptionwriter and satirst from the United States
  • BornAugust 14, 1925
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionAutobiographer
  • AwardsGeorge Polk Award; Pulitzer Prize For Biography Or Autobiography