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Communication
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The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
-Russell Baker, No Cause for Pain, "Times (London)", November 28, 1991
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Economics
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It seems to be a law in American life that whatever enriches us anywhere except in the wallet inevitably becomes uneconomic.
-Russell Baker
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Goals
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The goal of all inanimate objects is to resist man and ultimately defeat him.
-Russell Baker
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Happiness
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Happiness is a small and unworthy goal for something as big and fancy as a whole lifetime, and should be taken in small doses.
-Russell Baker
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Life
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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.
-Russell Baker
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Machiavellianism
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Usually, terrible things that are done with the excuse that progress requires them are not really progress at all, but just terrible things.
-Russell Baker
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Media
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Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity.
-Russell Baker, The Good Times, 1989
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Moon
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So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and, vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
-Russell Baker
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Poetry
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I gave up on new poetry myself thirty years ago, when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens on a hostile world.
-Russell Baker
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Things, Little Things
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Inanimate objects are classified scientifically into three major categories -- those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
-Russell Baker
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Tradition
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In America nothing dies easier than tradition.
-Russell Baker, "New York Times", May 14, 1991
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Books by and about Russell Baker