Objects can be classified scientifically into three major categories: those that don't work, those that break down and those that get lost.
Interpretation
The quote humorously categorizes objects based on their reliability and functionality.
Russell Baker uses wit to illustrate the common frustrations people experience with everyday objects. By dividing objects into three lighthearted categories—those that are ineffective, those that fail, and those that are misplaced—he highlights the failings of material possessions in a humorous way, making a relatable commentary on human experience.
In practice
Using this quote in a comedic speech about technology.
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.
The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.
Historical Re-creation, he thought glumly, as they picked their way across, under, over or through the boulders and insect-buzzing heaps of splintered timber, with streamlets running everywhere. Only we do it with people dressing up and running around with blunt weapons, and people selling hot dogs, and the girls all miserable because they can only dress up as wenches, wenching being the only job available to women in the olden days.
Sex: the pleasure is momentary, the position ridiculous, and the expense damnable.
It takes only one drink to get me drunk. The trouble is, I can't remember if it's the thirteenth or the fourteenth.
I am not gay, but if I were, I would be the first one running out of the closet.
You have to have a thick skin, yes. If you're going to do something as foolhardy as standup, you've got to be able to take it on the chin if someone has a go at you.
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