BBC News Programmes: Letter From America - Obituary and tributes to Alistair Cooke with highlights of the world's longest running speech radio programme which began in 1946, continuing until his retirement in February 2004.
Slate: Alistair Cooke - Alexander Chancellor's tribute to the journalist described as "America's pet Brit, Britain's favorite American".
Love and work are the cornerstones of our humanness.
-- Sigmund Freud "I don't think it's the nature of any man to be monogamous. Men are propelled by genetically ordained impulses over which they have no control to distribute their seed." (Marlon Brando) Acting is the most minor of gifts and not a very high-class way to earn a living. After all, Shirley
Temple could do it at the age of four.
-- Katharine Hepburn To marry is to halve your rights and double your duties.
-- Arthur Schopenhauer blah "It is a grand mistake to think of being great without goodness and I pronounce it as certain that there was never a truly great man that was not at the same time truly virtuous." (Benjamin Fran Cooke, Alistair Experience is the worst teacher; it gives the test before presenting the lesson.
-- Vernon Law "Careful?! Was my mother careful when she stabbed me in the heart with a coat hanger while I was still in the womb?" (Trey Parker) Most people would sooner die than think; in fact, they do so.
- Bertrand Russell Cooke, Alistair
I just want what every married woman wants, someone besides her husband to sleep with.
-- Peg Bundy, character on "Married with Children," U.S. television show Your every voter, as surely as your chief magistrate, exercises a public trust.
-- Grover Cleveland "Feeding is a very important ritual for me. I don't trust people who don't like to eat." (Gina Gershon) Behind every great fortune there is a crime.
- Honore de Balzac Conversation, fastidious Goddess, loves blood better than brick, and feasts most subtly on the
human will.
-- Virginia Woolf, Mrs. Dalloway Cooke, Alistair "Nothing has been purchased more dearly than the little bit of reason and sense of freedom which now constitutes our pride." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) A real leader faces the music, even when he doesn't like the tune.
-- Anonymous I don't know anything about luck. I've never banked on it, and I'm afraid of people who do. Luck to
me is something else; hard work and realizing what is opportunity and what isn't.
-- Lucille Ball Cooke, Alistair
Man is the only animal that laughs and has a state legislature.
-- Samuel Butler Democracy encourages the majority to decide things about which the majority is blissfully
ignorant.
--John Simon Ah Mozart! He was happily married - but his wife wasn't. -- Borge "You are rewarding a teacher poorly if you remain always a pupil." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
-- Steven Wright Cooke, Alistair And life is what we make it. Always has been, always will be.
-- Grandma Moses "It is my ambition to say in ten sentences what other men say in whole books--what other men do not say in whole books." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols) "Twelve magicians and two carnies have been shot dead doing the bullet catch. That's cool enough, but every night when we close our show with that trick and the loaded gun gets pointed in my face, it Cooke, Alistair
Never raise your hands to your kids. It leaves your groin unprotected.
-- Red Buttons There are people in the world so hungry, that God cannot appear to them except in the form of
bread.
- Mahatma Gandhi Marriage is a romance in which the heroine dies in the first chapter.
-- Cecilia Egan Love may be a dream but marriage is a nightmare.
-- Joan Collins The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and
remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't
work and the Cooke, Alistair This book fills a much-needed gap.
- Moses Hadas in a review One cannot think well, love well, sleep well, if one has not dined well.
-- Virginia Woolf "The formula for my happiness: a Yes, a No, a straight line, a goal." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) Cooke, Alistair
Some people talk in their sleep. Lecturers talk while other people sleep.
-- Albert Camus I heard someone tried the monkeys-on-typewriters bit trying for the plays of W. Shakespeare, but
all they got was the collected works of Francis Bacon.
- Bill Hirst Love is friendship set on fire.
- Jeremy Taylor In marriage, the bridge gets a shower. But for the groom, it's curtains! A man sits with a pretty girl for an hour, it seems like a minute. He sits on a hot stove for a
minute, it's longer than any hour. That is relativity.
-- Albert Einstein Cooke, Alistair Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of
genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius.
-- Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart "Nobody minds having what is too good for them." (Jane Austen) The story of a love is not important - what is important is that one is capable of love. It is perhaps
the only glimpse we are permitted of eternity.
-- Helen Hayes Cooke, Alistair
The streets are safe in Philadelphia. It's only the people who make them unsafe.
-- Frank Rizzo, ex-police chief and mayor of Philadelphia Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.
-- George Santayana Education is a progressive discovery of our own ignorance.
- Will Durant The tragedy of life is not that it ends so soon, but that we wait so long to begin it.
-- Anonymous "The mark of our time is its revulsion against imposed patterns." (Marshall McLuhan) Cooke, Alistair I married the first man I ever kissed. When I tell this to my children they just about throw up.
-- Barbara Bush, first lady, 1989 "The last of the human freedoms is to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances." (Viktor E. Frankl) A friend is one who knows us, but loves us anyway.
-- Fr. Jerome Cummings Cooke, Alistair
You can pay attention to the fact, in which case you'll probably become a mathematician, or you
can ignore it, in which case you'll probably become a physicist.
-- Len Evans, professor, Northwestern He has all the virtues I dislike and none of the vices I admire.
- Sir Winston Churchill "There is no quality in this world that is not what it is merely by contrast. Nothing exists in itself." (Herman Melville) There are two major products that come out of Berkeley: LSD and UNIX. We don't believe this to
be a coincidence.
-- Jeremy S. Anderson History will be kind to me for I intend to write it.
-- Winston Churchill Cooke, Alistair "When thou art at Rome, do as they do at Rome." (Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, 1547-1616) Does anal retentive have a hyphen?
-- Seen on a t-shirt A witty saying proves nothing.
- Voltaire Cooke, Alistair
Marriage certificate is just another word for a work permit. As for courage and will - we cannot measure how much of each lies within us, we can only trust
there will be sufficient to carry through trials which may lie ahead.
-- Andre Norton Goodbye, Everybody!
-- Hart Crane, poet, who committed suicide by jumping overboard during a steamship voyage. "People demand freedom only when they have no power." (Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche) "No person was ever honored for what he received. Honor has been the reward for what he gave." (Calvin Coolidge) Cooke, Alistair Death does not concern us, because as long as we exist, death is not here. And when it does
come, we no longer exist.
-- Epicurus Before God we are all equally wise - and equally foolish.
-- Albert Einstein Success usually comes to those who are too busy to be looking for it
- Henry David Thoreau Cooke, Alistair
The best teacher is the one who suggests rather than dogmatizes, and inspires his listener with
the wish to teach himself.
-- Edward Bulwer-Lytton Honolulu - it's got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife's mother. -- Ken Dodd Only positive consequences encourage good future performances.
-- Kenneth H. Blanchard A good marriage is at least 80 percent good luck in finding the right person at the right time. The
rest is trust.
-- Nanette Newman, British actress "Have you ever fed your pocket and starved your soul?" (Ivana Santilli, Too Deep) Cooke, Alistair "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they don't want to hear." (George Orwell) All courage is a form of constancy. It is always himself that a coward abandons first. After this all
other betrayals come.
-- Cormac McCarthy Good-bye. I am leaving because I am bored.
-- George Saunders - last words Cooke, Alistair
The Democrats are the party that says government will make you smarter, taller, richer, and
remove the crabgrass on your lawn. The Republicans are the party that says government doesn't
work and the Never give up, for that is just the place and time that the tide will turn.
-- Harriet Beecher Stowe "Fear is the dark room where the Devil develops his negatives." (Gary Busey) "The road of excess leads to the palace of wisdom." (William Blake) Self-reliance is the only road to true freedom, and being one's own person is its ultimate reward.
-- Patricia Sampson Cooke, Alistair "I feel I have to protect myself against things. So I'm pretty careful to lose most of them." (George Orson Welles) "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful committed citizens can change the world, indeed it is the only thing that ever has." (Margaret Mead, 1901-78) There's too much blood in my caffeine system.
-- Seen on a bumper sticker Cooke, Alistair
I'll sleep when I'm dead.
- Warren Zevon Marriage is the sole cause of divorce. The only reward of virtue is virtue.
-- Ralph Waldo Emerson Be like a postage stamp. Stick to one thing until you get there.
-- Josh Billings 'm living so far beyond my income that we may almost be said to be living apart.
-- ee cummings Cooke, Alistair Many a wife thinks her husband is the world's greatest lover. But she can never catch him at it. We must believe in free will, we have no choice.
-- Isaac B. Singer Marriage is a matter of give and take, but so far I haven't been able to find anybody who'll take
what I have to give.
-- Cass Daley Cooke, Alistair
