Russell Baker Quotes

I do think there's something funny about being over-optimistic.

To be candid, some people have given positive thinking a bad name. I can't stand to hear some gung-ho individual say that with positive thinking you can just do 'anything.' If you think about that one for a moment, you recognize the absurdity of it.

Enthusiasm and misplaced belief can take you a long way.

To be positive is to be mistaken at the top of one's voice.

They are most deceived that trusteth most in themselves.

To be enthusiastic about doing much with human nature is a foolish business indeed

You can never study Franklin Delano Roosevelt too much.

When I was a kid, FDR on the radio said, 'We have nothing to fear but fear itself.' We should be afraid of fear, or at least of acting out of it.

I thought I was a superstar at 12.

My mom is really naive - she thinks that because she is honest, other people will be honest too. That's not the way it works.

To succeed in life, you need two things: ignorance and confidence.

At the age of 19, you always think you are prepared for everything and you think you have the knowledge of what?s coming ahead.

Optimism and stupidity are nearly synonymous.

One of the major biases in risky decision making is optimism. Optimism is a source of high-risk thinking.

It's hard to lead a cavalry charge if you think you look funny on a horse.

Know the enemy and know yourself; in a hundred battles you will never peril.

I came out of my mom's stomach thinking I was going to own America.

Hope animates the wise, and lures the presumptuous and indolent who repose inconsiderately on her promises.

When I look at Franklin Roosevelt's leadership, I think the most important quality he had during the Depression and the war was this absolute confidence in himself, in his country, really in the American people. He was able to exude that confidence and almost project it.

optimism is a disease

Fellow countrymen: At this second appearing to take the oath of the Presidential office, there is less occasion for an extended address than there was at the first...The progress of our arms, upon which all else chiefly depends, is as well known to the public as to myself; and it is, I trust, reasonably satisfactory and encouraging to all. With high hope for the future, no prediction in regard to it is ventured.

Many count their chickens before they are hatched; and where they expect bacon, meet with broken bones.

I'm not a Pollyanna sort of kumbaya type.

Not knowing you can't do something, is sometimes all it takes to do it.

Children are great idealists, until the stupidity of their elders puts out the fires of the aspirations.