Russell Baker

"I remember being told that the worst thing about growing old is that other people start repeating themselves."

"The human spirit needs actual beauty in the world to feed it."

"We are all pretty much alike; it's only that some of us are sicker than others."

"The fear of something is often greater than the something itself."

"America had often been discovering itself - usually at other people's expense."

"The test of a writer is whether you want to read him again after many years."

"There is something about a man who can accept the tribulations of life without complaint that speaks to the deepest in us."

"Success is often the result of knowing how to fail gracefully."

"Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences of failure would be irreversible."

"The essence of good taste is restraint, the essence of bad taste is excess."

"Friendship is the only cement that will ever hold the world together."

"In the end, people remember not your words but how you made them feel."

"The purpose of life is to matter, to count, to stand for something."

"Patience is the art of concealing your impatience."

"A man reserves his true and deepest love for golf, a sport which is played, for the most part, in silence and intense concentration."

"There are three reasons for becoming a writer: the first is that you need the money; none of the other reasons matter."

"The writer who cares about his craft should care desperately about getting it right, one word at a time."

"It is customary in Washington to reward incompetence by giving the incompetent a promotion."

"One of the things that happens to old age is you don't care as much what people think about you."

"The cruel necessity of making a living distorts our fate and shapes our very being."

"Expectation is a poor form of hope, for it always ends in disappointment."

"The only thing harder than writing about something is not writing about something."

"Technology is the knack of arranging the world so that we don't have to experience it."

"History is the sum total of the things that could have been avoided."

"A newspaper is a device for making the ignorant more ignorant and the crazy more crazy."

"To write is to expose yourself, to strip bare your weaknesses and vanities."

"There's an element of inescapable tragedy in reaching a destination you've long dreamed of."

"The secret of American education has always been our willingness to educate the children of our enemies."

"Family is a life jacket in the stormy sea of life."

"One of the most generous gifts you can give another human is the gift of believing in their potential."