Quotes from Brooks Atkinson

The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty.

The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.

We cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and at the 11th hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.

Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers.

We [Americans] cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all, that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and that at the eleventh hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens.

This nation was built by men who took risks-pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness, business men who were not afraid of failure, scientists who were not afraid of the truth, thinkers who were not afraid of progress, dreamers who were not afraid of action.

After each war there is a little less democracy left to save.

The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.

The evil that men do lives on the front pages of greedy newspapers, but the good is oft interred apathetically inside.

Don't be condescending to unskilled labor. Try it for a half a day first.

I have no objections to churches so long as they do not interfere with God's work.

There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital and labor. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting each others throat.

The most fatal illusion is the narrow point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one.

Drop the last year into the silent limbo of the past. Let it go, for it was imperfect, and thank God that it can go.

People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.

In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them.