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The charm of television entertainment is its ability to bridge the chasm between dinner and bedtime without mental distraction.
Russell Baker -
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 always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.
Russell Baker
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Newspaper people, once celebrated as founts of ribald humor and uncouth fun, have of late lost all their gaiety, and small wonder.
Russell Baker -
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 to preach that unfairness is inescapable for some, good sense suggests that you also accept the inevitability of beastly behavior by people who have to carry the burden.
Russell Baker -
The old notion that brevity is the essence of wit has succumbed to the modern idea that tedium is the essence of quality.
Russell Baker -
Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.
Russell Baker -
Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
Russell Baker -
When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope diamond.
Russell Baker
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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 -
The French fried potato has become an inescapable horror in almost every public eating place in the country. 'French fries', say the menus, but they are not French fries any longer. They are a furry-textured substance with the taste of plastic wood.
Russell Baker -
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.
Russell Baker -
The best advice I can give anybody about going out into the world is this: Don't do it. I have been out there. It is a mess....
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 -
The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.
Russell Baker
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Every day and in every way, baseball gets fancier. A few more years and they'll be playing on oriental rugs.
Russell Baker -
Etiquette is the grease that makes it possible for all of us to rub together without unnecessary overheating.
Russell Baker -
I worry about people who get born nowadays, because they get born into such tiny families--sometimes into no family at all. When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope Diamond. And that encourages you to talk too much.
Russell Baker -
The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.
Russell Baker -
When sudden death takes a president, opportunities for new beginnings flourish among the ambitious and the tensions among such people can be dramatic, as they were when President Kennedy was killed.
Russell Baker -
A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems.
Russell Baker
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Journalism was being whittled away by a Wall Street theory that profits can be maximized by minimizing the product.
Russell Baker -
In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.
Russell Baker -
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 not to have many human contacts that they are afraid they may find out they really prefer life that way.
Russell Baker -
Now scarcely a week goes by without a news story about the cops swooping down on some adolescent prowler who is as skilled at breaking into computer systems as defense contractors are at breaking into the Federal budget.
Russell Baker