Andy Rooney, who died Saturday at the age of 92, had the last word each week on the CBS news magazine “60 Minutes.” Here are some of his great lines from those essays, along with a few others, that reveal his talent as a writer and the dry wit that made him famous.
“I try to look nice. I comb my hair, I tie my tie, I put on a jacket, but I draw the line when it comes to trimming my eyebrows. You work with what you got.” – from an essay on his eyebrows, Nov. 24, 1996
“We need people who can actually do things. We have too many bosses and too few workers. More college graduates ought to become plumbers or electricians, then go home at night and read Shakespeare.” – from an essay on finding a good job, March 21, 2010
“We didn’t shock them, and we didn’t awe them in Baghdad. The phrase makes us look like foolish braggarts. The president ought to fire whoever wrote that for him.” – on the start of the war in Iraq in 2003
“I recently bought this new laptop to use when I travel. Look at that. Fits right into my briefcase. It weighs less than three pounds. I lose that much getting mad, waiting to get on the plane through security at the airport.” – from an essay on computers, Feb. 11, 2009
CBS commentator Andy Rooney dies at 92
“We can all be prouder to be human beings, because that’s what they were. They make up for a lot of liars, cheats, and terrorists among us.” – on the astronauts aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger after it exploded on takeoff in 1986
“Not many people in this world are as lucky as I’ve been. … All this time I’ve been paid to say what is on my mind on television. You don’t get any luckier in life than that.” – from Rooney’s final “60 Minutes” essay, Oct. 2, 2011
“One of the things we can be sure of over the July 4th weekend is that news reports will keep telling us how many of us are going to die in automobile accidents.” – from Rooney’s first “60 Minutes” essay, July 2, 1978
“The third rule of life is this: Everything you buy today is smaller, more expensive, and not as good as it was yesterday.” – from an essay on coffee cans, Oct. 23, 1988
“A lot of these products are actually pretty good. But why are they always trying to con us with the contrived pictures on the box that don’t look anything like you get when you eat it?” – from an essay on the pictures on food packages, Dec. 4, 1988
“I don’t know anything offhand that mystifies Americans more than the cotton they put in pill bottles. Why do they do it? Are you supposed to put the cotton back in once you’ve taken a pill out?” – from an essay on pill bottles, Oct. 12, 1986
“I understand shipping – you have to expect to pay for the stamps or for the freight company – but what’s this handling they always have? How much does handling cost, anyway? I don’t want a lot of people handling something I’m going to buy before I get it. How much would it cost if you didn’t handle it before you sent it to me?” – from an essay on fine print, March 12, 1989
“Dogs are nicer than people.” – from an essay on the true things in life, Dec. 5, 2007
“I did not believe in the war. I thought it was wrong to go into any war. And I got to the war, and saw the Germans, and I changed my mind. I decided we were right going into World War II.” – from a CBS interview with Morley Safer, Oct. 2, 2011
“I am interested in details. If you go into anything far enough, you get into the details of it, and people turn out to be interested in what makes things work.” – from a 2010 interview in The Colgate Scene