“Sometime when you’re talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It’s good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.” — Russell Baker, Commencement Address to the Connecticut College Class of 1995 (1995-05-27)
“If you simply cannot resist being an incompetent klutz, don’t boast about it by wearing a tee shirt that says ‘underachiever and proud of it.’ Being dumb is not the worst thing in the world, but letting your clothes shout it out loud depresses the neighbors and embarrasses your parents.” — Russell Baker, Commencement Address to the Connecticut College Class of 1995 (1995-05-27)
“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.” — Russell Baker, Growing Up
“The biographer’s problem is that he never knows enough. The auto-biographer’s problem is that he knows much too much.” — Russell Baker, Inventing the Truth
“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.” — Russell Baker, “Back to the Dump,” The New York Times Magazine (1983-02-27)
“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, “Don’t ask me, I only live here,” Life (1969-07-25)
“Sometime when you’re talking up a storm so brilliant, so charming that you can hardly believe how wonderful you are, pause just a moment and listen to yourself. It’s good for the soul to hear yourself as others hear you, and next time maybe, just maybe, you will not talk so much, so loudly, so brilliantly, so charmingly, so utterly shamefully foolishly.” — Russell Baker, “10 Ways to Avoid Mucking Up the World Any Worse Than It Already Is,” Connecticut College, (1995-05-27)
“I frankly admit to not knowing who I am. This is why I refuse to buy clothes that will tell people who I want them to think I am.” — Russell Baker, “Talking Clothes,” So This Is Depravity
“It is risky to go around talking to strangers, for a lot of reasons, one being that people are so accustomed not to have many human contacts that they are afraid they may find out they really prefer life that way.” — Russell Baker, “Small Kicks in Superland,” So This Is Depravity
“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, “The Fact About Progress,” The New York Times (24 February 1970)
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