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QUOTES ABOUT TELEVISION

Television has been a constant presence in everyday life, informing, entertaining, and shaping how stories are shared across generations. It reflects changing cultures, technologies, and tastes while connecting audiences through shared moments on screen. The following quotes explore the impact, power, and possibilities of television in all its forms.   ◀ Back
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Advertisement shouldn’t look like information, it should look like a promise.
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Generally speaking, if you think something you want to do is wrong, it is.
- Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis
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Interviews were invented to make journalism less passive. Instead of waiting for something to happen, journalists ask someone what should or could happen.
- Mokokoma Mokhonoana
N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
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[...] I'd wake up in the middle of the night to the Star-Spangled Banner and some old film of a flag blowing in the wind, telling you the day was over and it was long past time to go to bed. That was back when days used to end, before CNN and infomercials, before all our days bled right into each other.
- Michael Montoure
Slices
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Poverty is a great educator. Having no boundaries and refusing to be ignored, it mostly teaches hopelessness. But not always. Politics is also a great educator. Mostly it teaches, I am afraid, cynicism. But not always. Television is a great educator as well. Mostly it teaches consumerism. But not always. It is the "not always" that keeps the romantic spirit alive in those who write about schooling. The faith is that despite some of the more debilitating teachings of culture itself, something can be done in school that will alter the lenses through which one sees the world; which is to say, that nontrivial schooling can provide a point of view from which what IS can be seen clearly, what WAS as a living present, and what WILL BE as filled with possibility
- Neil Postman, The End of Education
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Key element of television programming, the characters must watch the programming
themselves.
- Moonn Tzu
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Change is neither good or bad; it simply is.
- Matthew Weiner written for Don Draper on 'Mad Men'
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer, the purpose of which is to keep the viewers watching so that they will be exposed to the commercials
- Neil Postman
How to Watch TV News
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The dumbest thing I ever did? Buying a TV. The smartest thing I ever did? Giving that TV away.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly — maybe — and it will become a language like Latin that learned people learn. And scholars will write studies of Larry Sanders and Friends and Will & Grace and Ellen and Designing Women and Mary Tyler Moore, and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form. American poetry will perish with the language; the sitcoms, on the other hand, are new to human evolution and therefore will be less perishable.
- Nicholson Baker
The Anthologist
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A rumor is usually a lie that the media can legally profit from.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands conflagrations and ritual deaths. The television series rises slowly, arcs, descends into hiatus, and rises again with the bright, burning autumn.
- Catherynne M. Valente
Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If we really exist merely to fulfill God’s plan: then life is a television drama; with God being the scriptwriter, the director, and, the audience.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished.
- John Grooters
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"Anyway," continued Mr. Miller, "when I was a kid, people used to sit under the stars at night and look up into the sky and talk about things. They got to know each other. People Today is too busy staring at the television, what I call the idiot box, to talk about anything. That's why there are so many divorces these days. People don't talk."
- K. Martin Beckner
Chips of Red Paint
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Of course, in television's presentation of the "news of the day," we may see the Now...this" mode of discourse in it's boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion [on television], and then I realized this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of fin de siecle America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents...
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation
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Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.
- Rivera Sun
Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars - a story of our times -
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The worst part of it has been, I think, the adverse effect on family life. It kills off family conversation. And it’s harder to get your children to read books. I became a confirmed reader when I was growing up in Glendale. I’ve loved reading all my life. Now I’ve got this daughter, Aissa, a very bright young lady -- but it is a hard job to get her to read. Television’s just too easy.
- John Wayne
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I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'

'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'

'The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'

'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.

'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

'You're a God?' said Shadow.

Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said.
- Neil Gaiman
American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I don't think playing it safe constitutes a retreat, necessarily. In other words, I don't think if, by playing safe he means we are not going to delve into controversy, then if that's what he means he's quite right. I'm not going to delve into controversy. Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I'm going to be a meek conformist, and my answer is no. I'm just acting the role of a tired non-conformist.
- Rod Serling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Advertisement shouldn’t look like information, it should look like a promise.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Generally speaking, if you think something you want to do is wrong, it is.
- Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Interviews were invented to make journalism less passive. Instead of waiting for something to happen, journalists ask someone what should or could happen.
- Mokokoma Mokhonoana
N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
[...] I'd wake up in the middle of the night to the Star-Spangled Banner and some old film of a flag blowing in the wind, telling you the day was over and it was long past time to go to bed. That was back when days used to end, before CNN and infomercials, before all our days bled right into each other.
- Michael Montoure
Slices
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Poverty is a great educator. Having no boundaries and refusing to be ignored, it mostly teaches hopelessness. But not always. Politics is also a great educator. Mostly it teaches, I am afraid, cynicism. But not always. Television is a great educator as well. Mostly it teaches consumerism. But not always. It is the "not always" that keeps the romantic spirit alive in those who write about schooling. The faith is that despite some of the more debilitating teachings of culture itself, something can be done in school that will alter the lenses through which one sees the world; which is to say, that nontrivial schooling can provide a point of view from which what IS can be seen clearly, what WAS as a living present, and what WILL BE as filled with possibility
- Neil Postman, The End of Education
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Key element of television programming, the characters must watch the programming
themselves.
- Moonn Tzu
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Change is neither good or bad; it simply is.
- Matthew Weiner written for Don Draper on 'Mad Men'
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer, the purpose of which is to keep the viewers watching so that they will be exposed to the commercials
- Neil Postman
How to Watch TV News
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The dumbest thing I ever did? Buying a TV. The smartest thing I ever did? Giving that TV away.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly — maybe — and it will become a language like Latin that learned people learn. And scholars will write studies of Larry Sanders and Friends and Will & Grace and Ellen and Designing Women and Mary Tyler Moore, and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form. American poetry will perish with the language; the sitcoms, on the other hand, are new to human evolution and therefore will be less perishable.
- Nicholson Baker
The Anthologist
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A rumor is usually a lie that the media can legally profit from.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands conflagrations and ritual deaths. The television series rises slowly, arcs, descends into hiatus, and rises again with the bright, burning autumn.
- Catherynne M. Valente
Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If we really exist merely to fulfill God’s plan: then life is a television drama; with God being the scriptwriter, the director, and, the audience.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished.
- John Grooters
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
"Anyway," continued Mr. Miller, "when I was a kid, people used to sit under the stars at night and look up into the sky and talk about things. They got to know each other. People Today is too busy staring at the television, what I call the idiot box, to talk about anything. That's why there are so many divorces these days. People don't talk."
- K. Martin Beckner
Chips of Red Paint
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course, in television's presentation of the "news of the day," we may see the Now...this" mode of discourse in it's boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion [on television], and then I realized this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of fin de siecle America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents...
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.
- Rivera Sun
Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars - a story of our times -
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The worst part of it has been, I think, the adverse effect on family life. It kills off family conversation. And it’s harder to get your children to read books. I became a confirmed reader when I was growing up in Glendale. I’ve loved reading all my life. Now I’ve got this daughter, Aissa, a very bright young lady -- but it is a hard job to get her to read. Television’s just too easy.
- John Wayne
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'

'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'

'The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'

'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.

'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

'You're a God?' said Shadow.

Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said.
- Neil Gaiman
American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I don't think playing it safe constitutes a retreat, necessarily. In other words, I don't think if, by playing safe he means we are not going to delve into controversy, then if that's what he means he's quite right. I'm not going to delve into controversy. Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I'm going to be a meek conformist, and my answer is no. I'm just acting the role of a tired non-conformist.
- Rod Serling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Advertisement shouldn’t look like information, it should look like a promise.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Generally speaking, if you think something you want to do is wrong, it is.
- Adam Horowitz and Edward Kitsis
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Interviews were invented to make journalism less passive. Instead of waiting for something to happen, journalists ask someone what should or could happen.
- Mokokoma Mokhonoana
N for Nigger: Aphorisms for Grown Children and Childish Grown-ups
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
[...] I'd wake up in the middle of the night to the Star-Spangled Banner and some old film of a flag blowing in the wind, telling you the day was over and it was long past time to go to bed. That was back when days used to end, before CNN and infomercials, before all our days bled right into each other.
- Michael Montoure
Slices
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Poverty is a great educator. Having no boundaries and refusing to be ignored, it mostly teaches hopelessness. But not always. Politics is also a great educator. Mostly it teaches, I am afraid, cynicism. But not always. Television is a great educator as well. Mostly it teaches consumerism. But not always. It is the "not always" that keeps the romantic spirit alive in those who write about schooling. The faith is that despite some of the more debilitating teachings of culture itself, something can be done in school that will alter the lenses through which one sees the world; which is to say, that nontrivial schooling can provide a point of view from which what IS can be seen clearly, what WAS as a living present, and what WILL BE as filled with possibility
- Neil Postman, The End of Education
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Key element of television programming, the characters must watch the programming
themselves.
- Moonn Tzu
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Change is neither good or bad; it simply is.
- Matthew Weiner written for Don Draper on 'Mad Men'
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer, the purpose of which is to keep the viewers watching so that they will be exposed to the commercials
- Neil Postman
How to Watch TV News
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The dumbest thing I ever did? Buying a TV. The smartest thing I ever did? Giving that TV away.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
One day the English language is going to perish. The easy spokenness of it will perish and go black and crumbly — maybe — and it will become a language like Latin that learned people learn. And scholars will write studies of Larry Sanders and Friends and Will & Grace and Ellen and Designing Women and Mary Tyler Moore, and everyone will see that the sitcom is the great American art form. American poetry will perish with the language; the sitcoms, on the other hand, are new to human evolution and therefore will be less perishable.
- Nicholson Baker
The Anthologist
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
A rumor is usually a lie that the media can legally profit from.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
In a very real way, television is the new mythos. It defines the world, reinterprets it. The seasons do not change because Persephone goes underground. They change because new episodes air, because sweeps week demands conflagrations and ritual deaths. The television series rises slowly, arcs, descends into hiatus, and rises again with the bright, burning autumn.
- Catherynne M. Valente
Chicks Dig Time Lords: A Celebration of Doctor Who by the Women Who Love It
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
If we really exist merely to fulfill God’s plan: then life is a television drama; with God being the scriptwriter, the director, and, the audience.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished.
- John Grooters
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
"Anyway," continued Mr. Miller, "when I was a kid, people used to sit under the stars at night and look up into the sky and talk about things. They got to know each other. People Today is too busy staring at the television, what I call the idiot box, to talk about anything. That's why there are so many divorces these days. People don't talk."
- K. Martin Beckner
Chips of Red Paint
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Of course, in television's presentation of the "news of the day," we may see the Now...this" mode of discourse in it's boldest and most embarrassing form. For there, we are presented not only with fragmented news but news without context, without consequences, without value, and therefore without essential seriousness; that is to say, news as pure entertainment.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
At first, I was shocked that Diane could even suggest this family reunion [on television], and then I realized this is just the way of the world, or at least the way of fin de siecle America. Not only would the next revolution be televised, but so would every other little stupid thing. It was already happening: Television reunions between adopted children and their birth parents...
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
Stop listening to the TV tell you about America the beautiful . . . get up and be America the beautiful.
- Rivera Sun
Steam Drills, Treadmills and Shooting Stars - a story of our times -
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The television is 'real'. It is immediate, it has dimension. It tells you what to think and blasts it in. It must be right. It seems so right. It rushes you on so quickly to its own conclusions your mind hasn't time to protest, 'What nonsense!'.
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
The worst part of it has been, I think, the adverse effect on family life. It kills off family conversation. And it’s harder to get your children to read books. I became a confirmed reader when I was growing up in Glendale. I’ve loved reading all my life. Now I’ve got this daughter, Aissa, a very bright young lady -- but it is a hard job to get her to read. Television’s just too easy.
- John Wayne
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I'm the idiot box. I'm the TV. I'm the all-seeing eye and the world of the cathode ray. I'm the boob tube. I'm the little shrine the family gathers to adore.'

'You're the television? Or someone in the television?'

'The TV's the altar. I'm what people are sacrificing to.'

'What do they sacrifice?' asked Shadow.

'Their time, mostly,' said Lucy. 'Sometimes each other.' She raised two fingers, blew imaginary gunsmoke from the tips. Then she winked, a big old I Love Lucy wink.

'You're a God?' said Shadow.

Lucy smirked, and took a ladylike puff of her cigarette. 'You could say that,' she said.
- Neil Gaiman
American Gods
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
I don't think playing it safe constitutes a retreat, necessarily. In other words, I don't think if, by playing safe he means we are not going to delve into controversy, then if that's what he means he's quite right. I'm not going to delve into controversy. Somebody asked me the other day if this means that I'm going to be a meek conformist, and my answer is no. I'm just acting the role of a tired non-conformist.
- Rod Serling
Avg Rating: --Rate This Quote
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6
7
8
9
10
 		...