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Russell Baker

b: Morrisonville, Virginia, Aug 14, 1925

American. Journalist. Author. Columnist, New York Times; won Pulitzer, 1982, for autobiography Growing Up.

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"Every day in every way, baseball gets fancier. A few more years and they'll be playing on oriental rugs."

"Joe DiMaggio is not selling panty hose, but Joe Namath is. DiMaggio is selling coffee pots. Mickey Mantle, who replaced him in center field for the Yankees, is selling beer, with the help of Whitey Ford, who was to left-handed pitching what Edward G. Robinson was to the .45-caliber automatic."

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.

A new star with a tremendous national appeal, the skill of a consummate showman.

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.

A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems than you have to.

Ah, summer, what power you have to make us suffer and like it.

Americans like fat books and thin women.

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.

Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it.

Can't anything be done about calling these guys student athletes? That's like referring to attila the Hun's cavalry as "weekend warriors"

Caution: These verses may be hazardous to your solemnity.

Disguises thinner than a Chicago stripteaser's work clothes.

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

Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.

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.

I was converted from fool when my spine was somewhat reorganized. What amazed me was how fast a perfectly robust man looking forward to nothing more terminal than a night in Toledo can cease being alive once he pulls the dreamboat out of the driveway.

In america nothing dies easier than tradition.

In america, it is sport that is the opiate of the masses.

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.

Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.

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.

It seems to be a law of american life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.

It was dramatic to watch [my grandmother] decapitate [a turkey] with an ax the day before Thanksgiving. Nowadays the expense of hiring grandmothers for the ax work would probably qualify all turkeys so honored with "gourmet" status.

Life is always walking up to us and saying, "Come on in, the living's fine," and what do we do? Back off and take its picture.

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

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

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

Objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost

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

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

Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it.

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

Research is a scientific activity dedicated to discovering what makes grass green.

Situation comedy on television has thrived for years on "canned" laughter grafted by gaglines by technicians using records of guffawing audiences that have been dead for years.

Skins tanned to the consistency of well-traveled alligator suitcases.

Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.

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

The lobbies of the new hotels and the Pan american Building exhale a chill as from the unopened Pharaonic tombs... and in their marble labyrinths there is an evil presence that hates warmth and sunlight.

The 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.

The people who are always hankering loudest for some golden yesteryear usually drive new cars.

The worst thing about being a tourist is having other tourists recognize you as a tourist.

The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.

There are no liberals behind steering wheels.

There's so much spectating going on that a lot of us never get around to living.

Those people who taught Hubert Humphrey a lesson will still be enjoying the Nixon Supreme Court when Tricia and Julie begin to find silver threads among the gold and the black.

Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.

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.

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

You can't enjoy light verse with a heavy heart.