Live by publicity, you'll probably die by publicity.
Interpretation
Publicity can significantly influence one's life, and reliance on it may lead to one's downfall.
This quote by Russell Baker suggests that while living a life driven by public attention and perception can bring fame and recognition, it also carries inherent risks. Those who depend on publicity for their identity or success may find that the same forces that elevate them can also lead to their decline, emphasizing the precarious nature of public opinion and the importance of authenticity.
In practice
This quote could be used in a speech about the pitfalls of seeking fame without substance.
So there he is at last. Man on the moon. The poor magnificent bungler! He can't even get to the office without undergoing the agonies of the damned, but give him a little metal, a few chemicals, some wire and twenty or thirty billion dollars and vroom! there he is, up on a rock a quarter of a million miles up in the sky.
The worst thing about the miracle of modern communications is the Pavlovian pressure it places upon everyone to communicate whenever a bell rings.
Voters inclined to loathe and fear elite Ivy League schools rarely make fine distinctions between Yale and Harvard. All they know is that both are full of rich, fancy, stuck-up and possibly dangerous intellectuals who never sit down to supper in their undershirt no matter how hot the weather gets.
When it comes to cars, only two varieties of people are possible - cowards and fools.
Rereading A.J. Liebling carries me happily back to an age when all good journalists knew they had plenty to be modest about, and were.
Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward.
Faithfulness and truth are the most sacred excellences and endowments of the human mind.
Nothing is more dangerous than a dogmatic worldview - nothing more constraining, more blinding to innovation, more destructive of openness to novelty.
When we reach the outer limit of what Scripture says, it is time to stop arguing and start worshipping.
Tragedy is restful: and the reason is that hope, that foul, deceitful thing, has no part in it.
It usually takes a hundred years to make a law, and then, after it has done its work; it usually takes a hundred years to get rid of it.
The problem of our age is the proper administration of wealth, so that the ties of brotherhood may still bind together the rich and poor in harmonious relationship.
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