Words o' Wisdom

"The Washingtonian is too sophisticated to believe any more in solutions.  He is bred to the idea that life offers no soluble problems, but only unpleasant alternatives, some of which are less unpleasant than others.  This makes him a professional and accounts for the glazed look which quickly betrays him in, say, a typical New York conversation about world problems after someone has announced that everything would turn out happily if only people would love one another."

-- Russell Baker, from "It's Middletown-on-the Potomac" in the New York Times Magazine (1965)