85 Quotes by Alistair Cooke

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.

Every sport pretends to be literature. . .

New York is the biggest collection of villages in the world.

[President Franklin Roosevelt] was a great tickler of sacred cows not bred on his own pastures.

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.

A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn't feel like it.

People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.

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.

Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men.