Alistair Cooke > Quotes

“In the best of times, our days are numbered anyway. So it would be a crime against nature for any generation to take the world crisis so solemnly that it put off enjoying those things for which we were designed in the first place: the opportunity to do good work, to enjoy friends, to fall in love, to hit a ball, and to bounce a baby.”
― Alistair Cooke

“New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.”
― Alistair Cooke

“Curiosity…endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.”
― Alistair Cooke

“Every sport pretends to be literature. . .”
― Alistair Cooke

“It’s the rich what gets the pleasure, it’s the poor what gets the blame.’ I”
― Alistair Cooke, The Americans: Letters from America 1969–1979

“America is a country in which I see the most persistant idealism and the blandest of cynicism and the race is on between its vitality and its decadence.”
― Alistair Cooke

“[President Franklin Roosevelt] was a great tickler of sacred cows not bred on his own pastures.”
― Alistair Cooke, Talk About America: 1951-1968

“trees”
― Alistair Cooke, The American Home Front: 1941-1942