Alistair Cooke Quotes
1908–2004 England
Alistair Cooke KBE (20 November 1908 – 30 March 2004) was a journalist and broadcaster. Born in England, he became a naturalized American citizen.
- England
- Journalists
- Non-fiction authors
Random Alistair Cooke quote
10 quotes
Moving among wretched people in mean places, as I often saw him do, he had the impulses of a saint but not the serenity.
Six Men (1977)
He was at his best only when the going was good.
Six Men (1977)
In life no such colour brightened the grey picture of a man devoted to the daily study of warfare on several continents with all the ardour of a certified public accountant.
Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.
All Presidents start out pretending to run a crusade but after a couple of years they find they are running something less heroic and much more intractable: namely, the presidency.
Talk About America (1968)
He measured all his fellow workers by the test of professionalism, and a professional is a man who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.
Six Men (1977)
Some people say we are on the verge of the Second Civil War. And it may be so. But even on the darkest days, cheerfulness kept breaking in. I am not by nature a 'Whither America?' man.
To the goggling unbeliever Texans say — as people always say about their mangier dishes — "but it's just like chicken, only tenderer." Rattlesnake is, in fact, just like chicken, only tougher.
One hundred years after the Declaration that 'all men are created equal,' there began to gather in Newport a colony of the rich, determined to show that some Americans were conspicuously more equal than others.
Alistair Cooke's America (1973)
(The Negro) is a permanent invalid in American society. And the places he lives, whether in the town or the country, are its casualty wards. (p. 146.)
Alistair Cooke's America (1973)