Quote

The office of president is a bastardized thing, half royalty and half democracy that nobody knows whether to genuflect or spit.

Jimmy Breslin

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Jimmy Breslin
Age: 88 †
Born: 1928
Born: October 17
Died: 2017
Died: March 19
Journalist
Jamaica
Queens
James Earle Breslin
President
Royalty
Thing
Spit
Office
Nobody
Democracy
Politics
Whether
Half

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I became a copy boy. Not for long. I started writing stories.
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Don't trust a brilliant idea unless it survives the hangover.
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I think it would be very good if writers and artists take a stand in electoral politics. They've got the ability to put words together that might reach the ears of the people of the city who vote.
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Media, the plural of mediocrity.
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Baseball isn't statistics, it's Joe DiMaggio rounding second base.
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True New Yorkers do not really seek information about the outside world. They feel that if anything is not in New York it is not likely to be interesting.
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Rage is ... This is Breslin's full quote: Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers
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All political power is primarily an illusion. Illusion. Mirrors and blue smoke, beautiful blue smoke rolling over the surface of highly polished mirrors, first a thin veil of blue smoke, then a thick cloud that suddenly dissolves into wisps of blue smoke, the mirrors catching it all, bouncing it back and forth.
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Journalism should be truthful and entertaining. You know, with news and important facts you can entertain people too. Have a little humor. Life isn't all that deadly all the time, but while you're having fun, tell the truth. If every word of a column is deadly serious, I can't read it. It makes me throw up.
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When you leave New York you ain't going anywhere.
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What you want to do is not go to work. You're not missing a thing. The worst thing I did was start work young.
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The number one rule of thieves is that nothing is too small to steal.
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Football is a game designed to keep coal miners off the streets.
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I busted out of the place in a hurry and went to a saloon and drank beer and said that for the rest of my life I'd never take a job in a place where you couldn't throw cigarette butts on the floor. I was hooked on this writing for newspapers and magazines.
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If a man, for private profit, tears at the public news, does so with the impatience of one who thinks he actually owns the news you get, it is against the national interest.
Jimmy Breslin
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Anything that isn't writing is easy
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The test of a good idea is its ability to last through a hangover
Jimmy Breslin
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Designed by architects with honorable intentions but hands of palsy.
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The first funeral for Andrew Goodman was at night and it was a lot of work. To begin with they had to kill him.
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Men in the uniform of Wall Street retirement: black Chesterfield coat, rimless glasses and the Times folded to the obituary page.
Jimmy Breslin