The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.
About Alistair Cooke
Alistair Cookewas a British-American writer whose work as a journalist, television personality and radio broadcaster was done primarily in the United States. Outside his journalistic output, which included Letter from America and America: A Personal History of the United States, he was well known in the United States as the host of PBS Masterpiece Theatre from 1971 to 1992.
More quotes from Alistair Cooke
These doomsday warriors look no more like soldiers than the soldiers of the Second World War looked like conquistadors. The more expert they become the more they look like lab assistants in small colleges.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
A professional is someone who can do his best work when he doesn’t feel like it.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
Canned music is like audible wallpaper.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
Man has an incurable habit of not fulfilling the prophecies of his fellow men.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
Curiosity is free-wheeling intelligence.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
Hollywood grew to be the most flourishing factory of popular mythology since the Greeks.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
It’s an acting job – acting natural.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
Cocktail music is accepted as audible wallpaper.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
The best compliment to a child or a friend is the feeling you give him that he has been set free to make his own inquiries, to come to conclusions that are right for him, whether or not they coincide with your own.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
These humiliations are the essence of the game.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
As always, the British especially shudder at the latest American vulgarity, and then they embrace it with enthusiasm two years later.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
People in America, when listening to radio, like to lean forward. People in Britain like to lean back.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
Curiosity endows the people who have it with a generosity in argument and a serenity in their own mode of life which springs from their cheerful willingness to let life take the form it will.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)
People, when they first come to America, whether as travelers or settlers, become aware of a new and agreeable feeling: that the whole country is their oyster.
British journalist and broadcaster (1908-2004)