Russell Baker Quotes

I think that fear comes about when there's things in the world that we want to change, things we're scared or angry about, and we can't change them, and so we become fearful; we develop anxiety.

If I cry, it's because I'm very angry and I can't do anything about it because I've run into a dead end. That's when the tears would come down.

If you're writing about angry people, you use the language of anger. If you're writing about desperate people, you use the language of desperation.

The Cardinal is at his wit's end - it is true that he had not far to go.

No one is more miserable than the person who wills everything and can do nothing.

People's fear doth ofttimes degenerate into desperation

If there's something I hate the most, it's feeling helpless, powerless.

While one might laugh at the meaningless boredom of people a decade or two ago, the emptiness has for many now moved from the state of boredom to a state of futility and despair, which holds promise of dangers.

I feel like dying when I'm helpless

Generally speaking, violence always arises out of impotence. It is the hope of those who have no power.

You know, sometimes I feel well and vital in the world, and sometimes I just feel so distressed I want to pull my hair out by the roots.

A reprisal of this magnitude... has never been carried out before. I paced back and forth in my room perplexed and completely depressed, feeling helpless.

I turn and turn in my cell like a fly that doesn't know where to die.

Of all men's miseries the bitterest is this: to know so much and to have control over nothing.

I keep waiting for things to get back down to whelming, but they stay at overwhelming.

When you want to die, you at least have a goal. You're aiming for something. It's not a good goal, but at least you want something. And you've got anger and fear, but at least you're feeling something.

You don't realize it, but often people are frightened of the director.

I almost threw up the first time I set foot inside the University of California, San Francisco's Comprehensive Care Center and joined the stream of thin, slow-moving, low-voiced, gray-skinned people. I didn't want to be one of the pitied, the struck-down.

I have no mouth, and I must scream.

When you are desperate, it's usually because of fear.

I know I'm going to blow one day. My life is doomed the way it is. I have no future.

Are we not all desperate one way or another?

The poor monkey, quietly seated on the ground, seemed to be in sore trouble at this display of anger.

I feel not unlike a small boy, waking from a bad dream to find reality not much of an improvement.

There are two fairly standard approaches to political power used by those who seek it. Some seek power with the assumption that the citizenry are the source of legitimacy and are to be treated with respect. Others concentrate on identifying whatever insecurities there are within the citizenry and on exploiting them.'