Great Throughts Treasury

This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.

Russell Baker. fully Russell Wayne Baker

American Journalist, Pulitzer Prize-winning Writer, Author, Humorist and Political Satirist

"Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging."

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

"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."

"What [man landing on the moon] is doing up there is indulging his obsession with the impossible. The impossible infuriates and tantalizes him. Show him an impossible job and he will reduce it to a possibility so trite that eventually it bores him."

"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 compelled to cook, I produce a meal that would make a sword swallower gag."

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

"When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope diamond."

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