Alistair Cooke's Letter From America - Recent and archive editions of this weekly letter from America to the UK, the world's longest running speech radio programme.
Biography: Alistair Cooke - From the BBC Radio 4 Online web site. Includes an interview and a trivia quiz.
BBC: Radio Legend Cooke Dies Aged 95 - Veteran BBC broadcaster Alistair Cooke, best known for his Letter From America show, dies at home. Links to biography and tributes.
If we don't change the direction we are going,
We are likely to end up where we are heading.
-- Chinese saying He who laughs last didn't get it.
-- Helen Giangregorio Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can
only read the title.
-- Virginia Woolf We must believe in free will, we have no choice.
-- Isaac B. Singer Fashion is a form of ugliness so intolerable that we have to alter it every six months.
-- Oscar Wilde Cooke, Alistair Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.
-- George Bernard Shaw Marriage resembles a pair of shears, so joined that they cannot be separated; often moving in
opposite directions, yet always punishing any one who comes between them.
-- Sydney Smith "It is better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to open one's mouth and remove all doubt." (Abraham Lincoln, 1809-65) Cooke, Alistair
Each of us has a spark of life inside us, and our highest endeavor ought to be to set off that spark
in one another.
-- Kenny Ausubel "If it doesn't matter who wins or loses, then why do they keep score?" (Vince Lombardi) A fool's brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence
University education.
-- George Bernard Shaw Chance is always powerful. - Let your hook be always cast; in the pool where you least expect it,
there will be a fish.
-- Ovid Sex is like bridge: If you don't have a good partner, you better have a good hand.
-- Charles Pierce Cooke, Alistair We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit.
-- Aristotle "God is a gentleman. He prefers blondes." (Joe Orton, Loot) "I put on an act sometimes, and people think I'm insensitive. Really, it's like a kind of armor because I'm too sensitive. If there are two hundred people in a room and one of them doesn't like me, I' Cooke, Alistair
If stupidity got us into this mess, then why can't it get us out?
- Will Rogers Marry in haste, repent in leisure.
-- Tilney Marriage: A ceremony in which rings are put on the finger of the lady and around the hands and feet of the man. "For better or for worse, our company (The News Corporation Ltd.) is a reflection of my thinking, my character, my values." (Keith Rupert Murdoch, media mogul, 1931-) "We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then is not an act but a habit." (Aristotle) Cooke, Alistair Nuns: Women who marry God. If they divorce Him, do they get half the universe? It is with true love as it is with ghosts; everyone talks about it, but few have seen it.
-- François de La Rouchefoucauld Sex is God's joke on human beings.
-- Bette Davis Cooke, Alistair
Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.
-- Soren Kierkegaard History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
-- Napoleon Bonaparte The absolute yearning of one human body for another particular body and its indifference to
substitutes is one of life's major mysteries.
-- Iris Murdoch They gave me a book of checks. They didn't ask for any deposits.
-- Joe Early, Congressman (D-Mass), at a press conference to answer questions about the
House Bank scandal "The last Christian died on the cross." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Cooke, Alistair "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds." (Ralph Waldo Emerson) We in the industry know that behind every successful screenwriter stands a woman. And behind her stands his wife. -- Groucho Marx "Wise men learn more from fools, than fools from the wise." (Anonymous) Cooke, Alistair
Silence is as full of potential wisdom and wit as the unhewn marble of a great sculpture.
-- Aldous Huxley Human history becomes more and more a race between education and catastrophe.
- H. G. Wells Life isn't about finding yourself. Life is about creating yourself.
-- George Bernard Shaw "Conform and be dull." (J. Frank Doble) Whatever you do will be insignificant, but it is most important that you do it.
-- Gandhi Cooke, Alistair Standing in the middle of the road is very dangerous; you get knocked down by the traffic from
both sides.
-- Margaret Thatcher Don't anthropomorphize computers -- they hate it.
-- Anonymous You can take all the sincerity in Hollywood, place it in the navel of a firefly and still have room
enough for three caraway seeds and a producer's heart.
-- Fred Allen Cooke, Alistair
We must respect the other fellow's religion, but only in the sense and to the extent that we
respect his theory that his wife is beautiful and his children smart.
-- H. L. Mencken Integrity without knowledge is weak and useless, and knowledge without integrity is dangerous
and dreadful.
-- Samuel Johnson Fine art and pizza delivery: what we do falls neatly in between.
-- David Letterman Nothing is really work unless you would rather be doing something else.
-- James Matthew Barrie The IRS spends God knows how much of your tax money on these toll-free information hot lines
staffed by IRS employees, whose idea of a dynamite tax tip is that you should print neatly. If you
ask th Cooke, Alistair Oregon Democratic Senate candidate Tom Bruggere, in describing his support for
comprehensive health care during a candidates' forum, said he supported "erection-to-
resurrection" coverage. He later a Each friend represents a world in us, a world possibly not born until they arrive.
-- Anaïs Nin "May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house." (George Carlin) Cooke, Alistair
I criticize by creation - not by finding fault.
- Cicero blah "Some of the worlds greatest feats were accomplished by people not smart enough to know they were impossible. unattributed" (Anonymous) I do not have much patience with a thing of beauty that must be explained to be understood. If it
does need additional interpretation by someone other than the creator, then I question whether it
ha Tauzin backs term limits -- But he thinks it's a bad idea.
-- Headline, story in the New Orleans Times-Picayune, Feb 20, 1995 I'm at the age where food has taken the place of sex in my life. In fact, I've just had a mirror put
over my kitchen table.
-- Rodney Dangerfield Cooke, Alistair To love is to receive a glimpse of heaven.
-- Karen Sunde By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. -- Socrates Time is a great teacher, but unfortunately it kills all its pupils.
-- Hector Louis Berlioz Cooke, Alistair
It is dangerous for a national candidate to say things that people might remember.
-- Eugene McCarthy "Deep down, no one really believes they have a right to live. But this death sentence generally stays tucked away, hidden beneath the difficulty of living. If that difficulty is removed from time to t "Like as the waves make towards the pebbl'd shore, so do our minutes, hasten to their end." (William Shakespeare) If it were weren't for pickpockets, I'd have no sex life at all.
-- Rodney Dangerfield Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
-- Oscar Wilde Cooke, Alistair You've no idea of what a poor opinion I have of myself, and how little I deserve it.
-- W.S. Gilbert Trouble is a part of your life, and if you don't share it, you don't give the person that loves you
enough chance to love you enough.
-- Dinah Shore Ideas are like rabbits. You get a couple, learn how to handle them, and pretty soon you have a
dozen.
-- John Steinbeck Cooke, Alistair
I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.
-- Gore Vidal "Expect nothing. Live frugally on surprise." (Alice Walker) The bottom line is that (a) people are never perfect, but love can be, (b) that is the one and only
way that the mediocre and vile can be transformed, and (c) doing that makes it that. We waste
time I shall not waste my days in trying to prolong them.
- Ian L. Fleming The first rule of intelligent tinkering is to save all the parts.
-- Paul Ehrlich Cooke, Alistair If a relationship is to evolve, it must go through a series of endings.
-- Lisa Moriyama The society of women is the element of good manners.
-- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe As I would not be a slave, so I would not be a master. This expresses my idea of democracy.
-- Abraham Lincoln Cooke, Alistair
My mother-in-law broke up my marriage. My wife came home from work one day and found me in
bed with her.
-- Lenny Bruce Marry not a tennis player. For love means nothing to them. What if nothing exists and we're all in somebody's dream? Or what's worse, what if only that fat
guy in the third row exists?
-- Woody Allen Every man knows his follies and often they are the most interesting thing he has got.
-- Josh Billings When people talk, listen completely. Most people never listen.
-- Ernest Hemingway Cooke, Alistair May you grow so rich your widow's second husband never has to worry about a living, God forbid. You cannot think about thinking, without thinking about thinking about something.
-- Seymour Papert "Workers of the world unite; you have nothing to lose but your chains." (Karl Marx) Cooke, Alistair
Being on the tightrope is living; everything else is waiting.
- Karl Wallenda Marriage is a great institution, but I'm not ready for an institution.
-- Mae West "Love is blind; friendship closes its eyes." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Despite the high cost of living it remains a popular item.
-- Anonymous The sun never sets on the British empire because Britain is in the east and the sun sets in the
west.
-- Unknown history student Cooke, Alistair By the time (the Leaning Tower of Pisa) was 10% built, everyone knew it would be a total
disaster. But the investment was so big they felt compelled to go on. Since its completion, it cost
a fortune "Where there's a marriage without love there will be love without marriage." (Benjamin Franklin) "May the forces of evil become confused on the way to your house." (George Carlin) Cooke, Alistair
