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.
I'm as old as my tongue and a little older than my teeth.
There aren't many downsides to being rich, other than paying taxes and having relatives asking for money. But being famous, that's a 24 hour job right there.
I'm not here to affect you politically or socially. I'm here to make you laugh. I use the news as the palette for my jokes.
My second husband and I were going through a bitter divorce, and I didn't have the money for a fancy-pants attorney. I didn't know how to fight, so I'd lie awake at night and think of ways to kill him. But I knew I'd get caught, so I decided to put it in a book and get paid for it! I always think it's odd that a whole career came out of that homicidal impulse.
This looks like a job for inadvisably applied magic if ever I saw one.
You know what male comics can't do? They can't get pregnant. They can't perform pregnant. So my attitude is, just use all those differences.
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