Children 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 Baker on age
In 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 Baker on age
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were. Russell Baker on age
Those who remember Washington's cold war culture in the 1980s will recall the shocked reactions to Reagan's 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. Russell Baker on alone
Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear. Russell Baker on amazing
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 on best
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 on business
Except for politics, no business is scrutinized more exhaustively than journalism. Russell Baker on business
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 finance. Russell Baker on business
The best discussion of trouble in boardroom and business office is found in newspapers' own financial pages and speeches by journalists in management jobs. Russell Baker on business
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools. Russell Baker on car
Is 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 Baker on car
Few expected very much of Franklin Roosevelt on Inauguration Day in 1933. Like Barack Obama seventy-six years later, he was succeeding a failed Republican president, and Americans had voted for change. What that change might be Roosevelt never clearly said, probably because he himself didn't know. Russell Baker on change
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 on death
Like all young reporters - brilliant or hopelessly incompetent - I dreamed of the glamorous life of the foreign correspondent: prowling Vienna in a Burberry trench coat, speaking a dozen languages to dangerous women, narrowly escaping Sardinian bandits - the usual stuff that newspaper dreams are made of. Russell Baker on dreams
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 on education
Roosevelt's declaration that Americans had 'nothing to fear but fear itself' was a glorious piece of inspirational rhetoric and just as gloriously wrong. Russell Baker on fear
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 finance. Russell Baker on finance
A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul. Russell Baker on history
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 on home