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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

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Russell Baker
Age: 93 †
Born: 1925
Born: August 14
Died: 2019
Died: January 21
Autobiographer
Journalist
Writer
Morrisonville
Virginia
Russell Wayne Baker
Places
Bell
Modern
Bells
Worst
Rings
Upon
Communicate
Everyone
Whenever
Thing
Miracle
Communication
Pavlovian
Pressure
Communications

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Urban people, of course, are terribly scared nowadays. They may yearn for society, but 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.
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Listen once in a while. It's amazing what you can hear.
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In writing, punctuation plays the role of body language. It helps readers hear you the way you want to be heard.
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The charm of television entertainment is its ability to bridge the chasm between dinner and bedtime without mental distraction.
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The Government cannot afford to have a country made up entirely of rich people, because rich people pay so little tax that the Government would quickly go bankrupt. This is why Government men always tell us that labor is man's noblest calling. Government needs labor to pay its upkeep.
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Journalism talk is part of the nonstop background noise of American life.
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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.
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I've had an unhappy life, thank God.
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Skins tanned to the consistency of well-traveled alligator suitcases.
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Children rarely want to know who their parents were before they were parents, and when age finally stirs their curiosity, there is no parent left to tell them.
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When you're the only pea in the pod, your parents are likely to get you confused with the Hope diamond.
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A person whose job is deep thinking about atomic war would no more call a 'megadeath' a 'million corpses' than an embalmer would refer to a 'loved one' as a 'stiff.'
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Situation comedy on television has thrived for years on 'canned' laughter, grafted by gaglines by technicians using records of guffawing audiences that have been dead for years.
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Scientists have been struck by the fact that things that break down virtually never get lost, while things that get lost hardly ever break down.
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A solved problem creates two new problems, and the best prescription for happy living is not to solve any more problems.
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A day spent praising the earth and lamenting man's pollutionist history makes you feel like a superior, sensitive soul.
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It was Queen Elizabeth who made me a foreign correspondent.
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New York is the only city in the world where you can get run down on the sidewalk by a pedestrian.
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Strategic thinkers were naturally rattled to find this outsider fooling around with their work. They had been thinking strategically when Reagan was just another movie actor playing opposite a chimpanzee, for heaven's sake. They think Reagan is too naive, too innocent, to grasp the intellectual complexities of cold war strategy.
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Of all the people expressing their mental vacuity, none has a better excuse for an empty head than the newspaperman: If he pauses to restock his brain, he invites onrushing deadlines to trample him flat. Broadcasting the contents of empty minds is what most of us do most of the time, and nobody more relentlessly than I.
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