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Russell Baker Biography

Russell Wayne Baker (born August 14, 1925) 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). He was a columnist for The New York Times from 1962 to 1998, and also hosted the PBS show Masterpiece Theatre from 1992 to 2004. The ''Forbes Media Guide Five Hundred, 1994 states:

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Russell Baker Quotes

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.

Clearly, Kind, Media, Pen, People, Writing

The charm of television entertainment is its ability to bridge the chasm between dinner and bedtime without mental distraction.

Bedtime, Bridges, Chasm, Dinner, Mental, Television

Life seemed to be an educator's practical joke in which you spent the first half learning and the second half learning that everything you learned in the first half was wrong.

Educator, Everything, Firsts, Half, Practical, Wrong

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

Cities, Down, New York, Pedestrian, Run, Running

There are good reasons why everybody should heed politicians' advise not to believe the media. One of the best is that the media report what politicians say.

Believe, Heed, Media, Politicians, Reason Why, Report

Humans treat time as a map and always know where they are located on it and respond with the appropriate emotion.

Emotion, Know, Maps, Respond, Time, Treats

Goat cheese. . . produced a bizarre eating era when sensible people insisted that this miserable cheese produced by these miserable creatures reared on miserable hardscrabble earth was actually superior to the magnificent creamy cheeses of the noblest dairy animals bred in the richest green valleys of the earth.

Animal, Eating, Food, Hardscrabble, People, Valleys

A $10 million windfall? At today's prices, I'd feel almost as rich as I did one day in 1936 when I found a dime on the sidewalk and blew the whole wad on 20 Mary Jane candy bars, a box of jujubes, and a double feature.

Dimes, Found, Jujubes, Million, One Day, Today

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.

Born, Children, Confused, Family, Parents, Tiny

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.

Feel Good, Folks, Nonfolks, Opportunity, Photo, Smile

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

Activity, Grass, Green, Research

We honor ambition, we reward greed, we celebrate materialism, we worship acquisitiveness, we commercialize art, we cherish success and then we bark at the young about the gentle arts of the spirit. The kids know that if we really valued learning, we would pay our teachers what we pay our lawyers and stockbrokers. If we valued art, we would not measure it by its capacity to produce profits. If we regarded literature as important, we would remove it from the celebrity sweepstakes and spend a little money on our libraries.

Acquisitiveness, Art, Kids, Learning, Spend, Teacher

It was Queen Elizabeth who made me a foreign correspondent.

Correspondent, Foreign, Made, Queen, Queen Elizabeth, Queens

Most English speakers do not have the writer's short fuse about seeing or hearing their language brutalized. This is the main reason, I suspect, that English is becoming the world's universal tongue: English-speaking natives don't care how badly others speak English as long as they speak it. French, once considered likely to become the world's lingua franca, has lost popularity because those who are born speaking it reject this liberal attitude and become depressed, insulted or insufferable when their language is ill used.

Attitude, Long, Seeing, Speak English, Tongue, Used

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

Clever, Fools, People, Possible, Two, Varieties

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.

Flourish, New Beginnings, Opportunity, People, Sudden, Tensions

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.

1933, Clearly, Might, President, Roosevelt, Years

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 their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.

Harvard, Ivy, Rich, School, Undershirt, Yale

Long words, fat talk they may tell us something about ourselves. Has the passion for fat in the language increased as self-confidence has waned?

Fat, Increased, Long, Passion, Self Confidence, Tell

Of all the people expressing their mental vacuity, none has a better excuse for an empty head than the newspaperman: If he pauses to restock his brain, he invites onrushing deadlines to trample him flat. Broadcasting the contents of empty minds is what most of us do most of the time, and nobody more relentlessly than I.

Brain, Empty, Empty Mind, Flat, Invites, People

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