Russell Baker

"An educated person is one who has learned that information almost always turns out to be at best incomplete and very often false, misleading, fictitious, mendacious - just dead wrong."

"Anticipating that most poetry will be worse than carrying heavy luggage through O'Hare Airport, the public, to its loss, reads very little of it."

"I gave up on new poetry myself 30 years ago when most of it began to read like coded messages passing between lonely aliens in a hostile world."

"Inanimate objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories; those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost."

"Poetry is so vital to us until school spoils it."

"Reporters thrive on the world's misfortune. For this reason they often take an indecent pleasure in events that dismay the rest of humanity."

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

"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."