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" 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

Way

Born

Grandmother

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" Serious journalism need not be solemn. "

" Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it. "

" In America, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses. "

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

Russell Baker

Journalism

Politics

" 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. "

" 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. "

" 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. "

Russell Baker

World

Myself

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

" In America nothing dies easier than tradition. "

" Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life. "

" You can always tell folks from nonfolks. Folks like to feel good, like to smile for the camera when there's a big photo opportunity for a really good cause. "

" Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity. "

" Misery no longer loves company. Nowadays it insists on it. "

" The American press has the blues. Too many authorities have assured it that its days are numbered, too many good newspapers are in ruins. "

" 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 don't work, those that break down and those that get lost. "

" 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. "

" Americans like fat books and thin women. "

" Kingsley Amis was one of a trio of brilliant comic novelists who made English literature sparkle in the twentieth century. "

" 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

Age

Modest

" It's good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamelessly foolishly. "

" The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him. "

" 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 actor who had once played Reagan's father in a film. "

" A skillful playwright might have a good time with the story of the assassination of President William McKinley, and especially with the three most flamboyant political figures involved: Mark Hanna, Theodore Roosevelt, and Emma Goldman. "

" 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. "

" Feel good about linking hands in human chain for good causes. "

" A group of politicians deciding to dump a President because his morals are bad is like the Mafia getting together to bump off the Godfather for not going to church on Sunday. "

" When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools. "

" Don't try to make children grow up to be like you, or they may do it. "

" A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul. "