11 Quotes & Sayings By Brooks Atkinson

Brooks Atkinson was the first staff writer for The New York Times, where he continued to write regularly until his death in 1985. His most recent work is Making the Modern World, a history of the invention of the modern world, which was published by HarperCollins.

1
The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion, a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one. Brooks Atkinson
2
In every age "the good old days" were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them. Brooks Atkinson
3
The most fatal illusion is the settled point of view. Since life is growth and motion a fixed point of view kills anybody who has one. Brooks Atkinson
4
Every man with an idea has at least two or three followers. Brooks Atkinson
5
Life is seldom as unendurable as to judge by the facts it logically ought to be. Brooks Atkinson
6
The virtue of the camera is not the power it has to transform the photographer into an artist but the impulse it gives him to keep on looking. Brooks Atkinson
7
We [Americans] cheerfully assume that in some mystic way love conquers all that good outweighs evil in the just balances of the universe and that at the eleventh hour something gloriously triumphant will prevent the worst before it happens. Brooks Atkinson
8
This nation was built by men who took risks-pioneers who were not afraid of the wilderness business men who were not afraid of failure scientists who were not afraid of the truth thinkers who were not afraid of progress dreamers who were not afraid of action. Brooks Atkinson
9
In every age 'the good old days' were a myth. No one ever thought they were good at the time. For every age has consisted of crises that seemed intolerable to the people who lived through them. Brooks Atkinson
10
It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge. Brooks Atkinson