Andy Rooney_ 60 Years of Wisdom and Wit - Andy Rooney [115]
3. We are selling things better than we’re making them in the United States.
4. Capitalism and the free-enterprise system are not working very well. There are too many very rich and too many very poor in the United States. Fortunately, the economic system that doesn’t work as well as capitalism is communism. Communists are almost all poor.
5. When I was young I always assumed I’d get to like carrots when I got older but I never did.
6. In spite of all the kind things people are always saying about the poor and homeless, people with jobs and houses are usually more interesting and capable and I prefer to be with them.
7. I am often embarrassed by the people I find agreeing with me.
8. Big Business talks as if it doesn’t like Big Government but the fact of the matter is, Big Business is in business with Big Government. Big Business is closer to Big Government than Big Government is to the people, but neither wants anyone to know it.
9. Most poetry is pretentious nonsense.
10. The people of the United States never worked so well or so hard or accomplished so much as they did during the four years of World War II. We need to find some substitute for war as a means of motivating ourselves to do our best. Money isn’t the answer, either.
11. I don’t favor abortion although I like the people who are for it better than the people who are against it.
12. Good old friends are worth keeping whether you like them or not.
13. Although I went to Sunday school for several years at the Madison Avenue Presbyterian Church, I was not persuaded that Mary never slept with anyone before Jesus was born.
14. I’m suspicious of the academic standards of a college that always has a good basketball team. When a college loses a lot of games, I figure they’re letting the students play.
15. A person is more apt to get to be the boss by making decisions quickly than by making them correctly.
16. Until we can all have the medical attention a President gets, there will not be too many doctors.
17. A great many people do not have a right to their own opinion because they don’t know what they’re talking about.
18. The least able among us are having the most children. Among women, college graduates are having the fewest babies, high-school graduates are having the next fewest and the people who don’t get to high school or drop out once they do are having the most babies. The most capable women are getting the best jobs and are least apt to have big families . . . or sometimes, any family at all.
19. If I were black, I would be a militant, angry black man, railing against the injustices that have been done me. Being white, I think blacks should forget it and go to work.
20. If I were a woman, I would be an angry woman. Men are satisfied having women be something women are not satisfied being. We have a problem here.
21. There are facts too painful to face. I cannot watch a documentary about the slow death facing all elephants and whales.
22. The people who speak up in public for or against something almost always lose my support by being too loud about it.
23. It doesn’t interest me to watch a movie or read a novel in which the characters are put in difficult situations by a writer. I’m not interested in being reminded of difficulties. It’s already on my mind.
24. It’s hard for me to believe that, in the next 150 years, we’ll have as many important inventions and discoveries as we’ve had in the last 150. What is there left comparable in importance to the electric light, the telephone, the gas engine, radio, flight, television, nuclear energy, space exploration, computers and Coca-Cola?
(If anyone were to read that paragraph 150 years from now, I’m sure they’d laugh at my ignorance.)
25. People like to say, “You’re only as old as you feel,” but it isn’t true. It’s just something old people say to make themselves feel good about their age. You’re as old as you are.
26. I spent fifty years of my life working to become well-known as a writer and I’ve spent the last ten hiding