The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote highlights the contrast between human struggles in daily life and the extraordinary achievements possible through innovation and resources.
In this quote, Russell Baker humorously reflects on the irony of human capability. While individuals may struggle with mundane tasks and experience personal failures, they can also achieve monumental feats, such as space exploration, with the aid of technology and significant investment. This juxtaposition illustrates the complexities of human nature, where greatness and frailty coexist, suggesting that with the right tools and support, extraordinary accomplishments can become a reality.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a speech on the achievements of humanity in technology and science.
More from Russell Baker
All quotes →Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.
Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.
Objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
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Most institutions demand unqualified faith; but the institution of science makes skepticism a virtue.
We have language and they do not. Chimps communicate by embracing, patting, looking - all these things. And they have lots of sounds. But they cannot sit and discuss. They cannot teach about things that are not present, as far as we know.
It stands to the everlasting credit of science that by acting on the human mind it has overcome man's insecurity before himself and before nature.
Biology occupies a position among the sciences at once marginal and central. Marginal because-the living world constituting but a tiny and very "special" part of the universe-it does not seem likely that the study of living beings will ever uncover general laws applicable outside the biosphere. But if the ultimate aim of the whole of science is indeed, as I believe, to clarify man's relationship to the universe, then biology must be accorded a central position . . .
I argue that for every country to have an independent fuel cycle is the wrong way to go. Because any country which has a complete fuel cycle is a latent nuclear weapons country, in the sense that it is not far from making a nuclear weapon.
I enjoy science, and I'm a very curious person. I always want to know the reason behind everything, big or small.