A Quote by Russell Baker

Though Americans talk a good deal about the virtue of being serious, they generally prefer people who are solemn over people who are serious. In politics, the rare candidate who is serious, like Adlai Stevenson, is easily overwhelmed by one who is solemn, like General Eisenhower. This is probably because it is hard for most people to recognize seriousness, which is rare, especially in politics, but comfortable to endorse solemnity, which is as commonplace as jogging.

Russell Baker

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Russell Baker
American - Journalist
Born: August 14, 1925

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

Ernest Hemingway

It is not so important to be serious as it is to be serious about the important things. The monkey wears an expression of seriousness which would do credit to any college student, but the monkey is serious because he itches.

Robert M. Hutchins

The seriousness or otherwise of the subject matter is often irrelevent to the question of whether a book is any good. F Scott Fitzgerald wrote a great and beautiful novel which mainly involved shallow people going to parties in a rich guy's house. By contrast, all sorts of terrible books are published every month about men slaughtering people for no reason - a serious matter which, in itself, does not make the author worthy of serious consideration.

Declan Lynch

The hard part about writing about a guy like John Brown is that he was so serious, and his cause was so serious, that most of what's been written about him is really serious and, in my opinion, a little bit boring.

James McBride

The Christian is not superficial in any sense, but is fundamentally serious and fundamentally happy. You see, the joy of the Christian is a holy joy; the happiness of the Christian is a serious happiness. ... it is a solemn joy, it is a holy joy, it is a serious happiness; so that, though he is grave and sober-minded and serious, he is never cold and prohibitive.

Martyn Lloyd-Jones

Too many people confuse being serious with being solemn.

John Cleese

[On being criticized for her serious expression:] I simply ache from smiling. Why are women expected to beam all the time? It's unfair. If a man looks solemn, it's automatically assumed he's a serious person, not a miserable one.

Queen Elizabeth II

I think people are always really surprised when they realise I'm not a very serious person and that I'm not tremendously serious about acting. I don't like to rehearse; I hate improv. Directors that don't like to talk, they're my favourite ones.

Julianne Moore

If you think of politics as 'serious people focusing seriously on the most important questions,' which is the default mode of most educated people and the media (but not the less-educated public which has better instincts), then your model of reality is badly wrong.

Dominic Cummings

I'm not a serious photographer like many of my contemporaries. That is to say, I am serious about not being serious.

Elliott Erwitt

I don't have courage in my convictions and I'm not interested in serious things or politics: if you're doing an hour of standup, you should talk about a few serious things.

Alex Horne

People say that I am always serious and depressing, but it seems to me that the English are never serious - they are flippant, complacent, ineffable, but never serious, which is sometimes maddening.

Anita Brookner

Famous crime stories almost always lead to the passing of new laws. There's a great many intersections between this unseemly tabloid phenomena and serious social issues and we never get to that intersection because serious people don't like to talk about that unattractive stuff.

Bill James

So if you are a Republican and you just can't abide [Donald] Trump - which means you're not serious about stopping Hillary [Clinton]; you're not serious about keeping her out of the White House - then people should vote for you because you?

Rush Limbaugh

I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy. We've switched from a culture that was interested in manufacturing, economics, politics - trying to play a serious part in the world - to a culture that's really entertainment-based. I mean, I know people who can tell you who won the last four seasons on American Idol and they don't know who their [bleeping] Representatives are.

Stephen King

For me, personally, I think the serious gamers - the guys who know the levels - play Xbox, and people who are just good at the game play PS3. I play PS3 because I'm not a serious, serious gamer like that. But when I play the Xbox, the standard is so much higher.

Daniel Sturridge

A Quote by Russell Baker

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