Brooks Atkinson
Brooks Atkinson
Justin Brooks Atkinsonwas an American theatre critic. He worked for The New York Times from 1925 to 1960. In his obituary, the Times called him "the theater's most influential reviewer of his time."...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth28 November 1894
CityMelrose, MA
CountryUnited States of America
responsibility men perfect
The perfect bureaucrat everywhere is the man who manages to make no decisions and escape all responsibility.
humorous men years
The humorous man recognizes that absolute purity, absolute justice, absolute logic and perfection are beyond human achievement and that men have been able to live happily for thousands of years in a state of genial frailty.
graduation college men
It takes most men five years to recover from a college education, and to learn that poetry is as vital to thinking as knowledge.
believe responsibility thinking
People everywhere enjoy believing things that they know are not true. It spares them the ordeal of thinking for themselves and taking responsibility for what they know.
perspective people ideals
In the ideal sense nothing is uninteresting; there are only uninterested people.
life men evil
The evil that men do lives on the front pages of greedy newspapers, but the good is oft interred apathetically inside.
people theatre sides
Although the theater is not life, it is composed of fragments or imitations of life, and people on both sides of the footlight have to unite to make the fragments whole and the imitations genuine.
crazy play theatre
Good plays drive bad playgoers crazy.
play america optimism
In the 1920s dramatists attacked their subjects as if the inequities could be resolved. Some of the traditional optimism of America lurked behind most of the early plays. But not now. There is no conviction now that the problem will be solved.
truth quintessence has-beens
It seems not to have been written. It is the quintessence of life. It is the basic truth.
book writing radiance
Writing is not an end in itself but life transmuted into radiance.
new-york rain assuming
New Yorkers are inclined to assume it will never rain, and certainly not on New Yorkers.
business cutting matter
There is a good deal of solemn cant about the common interests of capital and labor. As matters stand, their only common interest is that of cutting each others throat.
appreciation art alive
Nobody is fully alive who cannot apply to art as much discrimination and appreciation as he applies to the work by which he earns his living.