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.
If you can't run, you crawl. If you can't crawl-- you find someone to carry you.
Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
Saturday morning was their unrestricted television time, and they usually took advantage of it to watch a series of cartoon shows that would certainly have been impossible before the discovery of LSD.
- Jeff Lindsay
Dexter in the Dark
If you look into the face of evil, evil's gonna look right back at you
- American Horror Story
Living rooms are arranged around the TV, but when you take away the box you have the freedom to arrange the room to suit yourself.
- Benjamin Zephaniah
Teacher's Dead
I cannot tell you how many quiet mornings I have spent sitting around hotel rooms and furnished apartments in the United States and Mexico, smoking cigarettes, plunking the guitar, and watching Perry Mason--telling myself, "Well, at least I don't have a day job. And there is nothing wrong with that. I am not guilty of anything. Perry would see that in a minute.
- Dave Hickey
Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy
I feel guilty because for a long time I didn't allow myself a television, and I used to drop that fact in conversation to impress people. I thought it made me sound dignified. A couple of years ago, however, I visited a church in the suburbs and there was this blowhard preacher talking about how television rots your brain. He said that when we are watching television our minds are working no harder than when we are sleeping. I thought that sounded heavenly. I bought one that afternoon.
- Donald Miller
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
5. Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still really young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, (e) poison, and generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school.
6. Television puts a stop to crime because all the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.
6. Television puts a stop to crime because all the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.
- George Mikes
How to Be a Brit
[W]hen a message is squeezed through a twenty-second news spot, so much can be lost that what is left will fail to move anyone enough to make them turn off the set and actually do something. Meanwhile, the viewers will believe that they have learned everything they need to know on that subject and will be bored the next time they hear it.
- Jerry Mander
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Through TV people turn their family living rooms into meditative dens of death and violence worship.
- Bryant McGill
Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The world's a T.V.
and hang-ups
are commercials.
and hang-ups
are commercials.
- Jimi Hendrix
Cherokee Mist: The Lost Writings
As 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon would say, ‘I want to go to there.
- Lucy Mangan
Inside Charlie's Chocolate Factory: The Complete Story of Willy Wonka, the Golden Ticket, and Roald Dahl's Most Famous Creation.
Man, I wish school could be like this. No tests. No grades. Everyone here because they want to be. The true adventure of learning.
- Jody Houser
Stranger Things Science Camp #1 CVR B Lambert
Before the advent of HBO and Showtime, it wasn't so easy to make a TV character swear like a sailor, cowboy, or mobster.
- Mark Peters
Yada, Yada, Doh!: 111 Television Words That Made the Leap from the Screen to Society
I did not bring a television set out here with me, and I regret it sometimes when the evenings get long, but my idea was that living alone you can soon get stuck to those flickering images and to the chair you will sit on far into the night, and then time merely passes as you let others do the moving. I do not want that. I will keep myself company.
- Per Petterson
Out Stealing Horses
Opportunity knocks but some people are too busy watching TV.
- Wayne Gerard Trotman
The biggest mistake in my political life was not to learn how to use television.
- Hubert Humphrey
This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less that one minute's time.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
I was only aware of the USA government changing from Obama/Biden to Trump/Pence because I saw it on television, as nothing changed in my neighborhood.
Some of the television doctors may kill you if you let them.
The TV was a rage-making machine, working at him all the time, giving him direction and scope, enlarging him in a sense, filling him with a world rage, a great stalking soreness and rancour.
- Don DeLillo
The Names
In the struggle for survival, the cutest win out at the expense of the less cute because they appeal more to celebrities and, through them, to a live television audience.
- Garson O'Toole
Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations
Media: the tongue of a nation!
- Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
If you can't run, you crawl. If you can't crawl-- you find someone to carry you.
Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
Saturday morning was their unrestricted television time, and they usually took advantage of it to watch a series of cartoon shows that would certainly have been impossible before the discovery of LSD.
- Jeff Lindsay
Dexter in the Dark
If you look into the face of evil, evil's gonna look right back at you
- American Horror Story
Living rooms are arranged around the TV, but when you take away the box you have the freedom to arrange the room to suit yourself.
- Benjamin Zephaniah
Teacher's Dead
I cannot tell you how many quiet mornings I have spent sitting around hotel rooms and furnished apartments in the United States and Mexico, smoking cigarettes, plunking the guitar, and watching Perry Mason--telling myself, "Well, at least I don't have a day job. And there is nothing wrong with that. I am not guilty of anything. Perry would see that in a minute.
- Dave Hickey
Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy
I feel guilty because for a long time I didn't allow myself a television, and I used to drop that fact in conversation to impress people. I thought it made me sound dignified. A couple of years ago, however, I visited a church in the suburbs and there was this blowhard preacher talking about how television rots your brain. He said that when we are watching television our minds are working no harder than when we are sleeping. I thought that sounded heavenly. I bought one that afternoon.
- Donald Miller
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
5. Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still really young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, (e) poison, and generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school.
6. Television puts a stop to crime because all the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.
6. Television puts a stop to crime because all the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.
- George Mikes
How to Be a Brit
[W]hen a message is squeezed through a twenty-second news spot, so much can be lost that what is left will fail to move anyone enough to make them turn off the set and actually do something. Meanwhile, the viewers will believe that they have learned everything they need to know on that subject and will be bored the next time they hear it.
- Jerry Mander
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Through TV people turn their family living rooms into meditative dens of death and violence worship.
- Bryant McGill
Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The world's a T.V.
and hang-ups
are commercials.
and hang-ups
are commercials.
- Jimi Hendrix
Cherokee Mist: The Lost Writings
As 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon would say, ‘I want to go to there.
- Lucy Mangan
Inside Charlie's Chocolate Factory: The Complete Story of Willy Wonka, the Golden Ticket, and Roald Dahl's Most Famous Creation.
Man, I wish school could be like this. No tests. No grades. Everyone here because they want to be. The true adventure of learning.
- Jody Houser
Stranger Things Science Camp #1 CVR B Lambert
Before the advent of HBO and Showtime, it wasn't so easy to make a TV character swear like a sailor, cowboy, or mobster.
- Mark Peters
Yada, Yada, Doh!: 111 Television Words That Made the Leap from the Screen to Society
I did not bring a television set out here with me, and I regret it sometimes when the evenings get long, but my idea was that living alone you can soon get stuck to those flickering images and to the chair you will sit on far into the night, and then time merely passes as you let others do the moving. I do not want that. I will keep myself company.
- Per Petterson
Out Stealing Horses
Opportunity knocks but some people are too busy watching TV.
- Wayne Gerard Trotman
The biggest mistake in my political life was not to learn how to use television.
- Hubert Humphrey
This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less that one minute's time.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
I was only aware of the USA government changing from Obama/Biden to Trump/Pence because I saw it on television, as nothing changed in my neighborhood.
Some of the television doctors may kill you if you let them.
The TV was a rage-making machine, working at him all the time, giving him direction and scope, enlarging him in a sense, filling him with a world rage, a great stalking soreness and rancour.
- Don DeLillo
The Names
In the struggle for survival, the cutest win out at the expense of the less cute because they appeal more to celebrities and, through them, to a live television audience.
- Garson O'Toole
Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations
Media: the tongue of a nation!
- Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
If you can't run, you crawl. If you can't crawl-- you find someone to carry you.
Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
Saturday morning was their unrestricted television time, and they usually took advantage of it to watch a series of cartoon shows that would certainly have been impossible before the discovery of LSD.
- Jeff Lindsay
Dexter in the Dark
If you look into the face of evil, evil's gonna look right back at you
- American Horror Story
Living rooms are arranged around the TV, but when you take away the box you have the freedom to arrange the room to suit yourself.
- Benjamin Zephaniah
Teacher's Dead
I cannot tell you how many quiet mornings I have spent sitting around hotel rooms and furnished apartments in the United States and Mexico, smoking cigarettes, plunking the guitar, and watching Perry Mason--telling myself, "Well, at least I don't have a day job. And there is nothing wrong with that. I am not guilty of anything. Perry would see that in a minute.
- Dave Hickey
Air Guitar: Essays on Art & Democracy
I feel guilty because for a long time I didn't allow myself a television, and I used to drop that fact in conversation to impress people. I thought it made me sound dignified. A couple of years ago, however, I visited a church in the suburbs and there was this blowhard preacher talking about how television rots your brain. He said that when we are watching television our minds are working no harder than when we are sleeping. I thought that sounded heavenly. I bought one that afternoon.
- Donald Miller
Blue Like Jazz: Nonreligious Thoughts on Christian Spirituality
5. Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still really young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, (e) poison, and generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school.
6. Television puts a stop to crime because all the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.
6. Television puts a stop to crime because all the burglars and robbers, instead of going to burgle and rob, sit at home watching The Lone Ranger, Emergency Ward Ten and Dotto.
- George Mikes
How to Be a Brit
[W]hen a message is squeezed through a twenty-second news spot, so much can be lost that what is left will fail to move anyone enough to make them turn off the set and actually do something. Meanwhile, the viewers will believe that they have learned everything they need to know on that subject and will be bored the next time they hear it.
- Jerry Mander
Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television
Through TV people turn their family living rooms into meditative dens of death and violence worship.
- Bryant McGill
Simple Reminders: Inspiration for Living Your Best Life
The world's a T.V.
and hang-ups
are commercials.
and hang-ups
are commercials.
- Jimi Hendrix
Cherokee Mist: The Lost Writings
As 30 Rock’s Liz Lemon would say, ‘I want to go to there.
- Lucy Mangan
Inside Charlie's Chocolate Factory: The Complete Story of Willy Wonka, the Golden Ticket, and Roald Dahl's Most Famous Creation.
Man, I wish school could be like this. No tests. No grades. Everyone here because they want to be. The true adventure of learning.
- Jody Houser
Stranger Things Science Camp #1 CVR B Lambert
Before the advent of HBO and Showtime, it wasn't so easy to make a TV character swear like a sailor, cowboy, or mobster.
- Mark Peters
Yada, Yada, Doh!: 111 Television Words That Made the Leap from the Screen to Society
I did not bring a television set out here with me, and I regret it sometimes when the evenings get long, but my idea was that living alone you can soon get stuck to those flickering images and to the chair you will sit on far into the night, and then time merely passes as you let others do the moving. I do not want that. I will keep myself company.
- Per Petterson
Out Stealing Horses
Opportunity knocks but some people are too busy watching TV.
- Wayne Gerard Trotman
The biggest mistake in my political life was not to learn how to use television.
- Hubert Humphrey
This perception of a news show as a stylized dramatic performance whose content has been staged largely to entertain is reinforced by several other features, including the fact that the average length of any story is forty-five seconds. While brevity does not suggest triviality, in this case it clearly does. It is simply not possible to convey a sense of seriousness about any event if its implications are exhausted in less that one minute's time.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
I was only aware of the USA government changing from Obama/Biden to Trump/Pence because I saw it on television, as nothing changed in my neighborhood.
Some of the television doctors may kill you if you let them.
The TV was a rage-making machine, working at him all the time, giving him direction and scope, enlarging him in a sense, filling him with a world rage, a great stalking soreness and rancour.
- Don DeLillo
The Names
In the struggle for survival, the cutest win out at the expense of the less cute because they appeal more to celebrities and, through them, to a live television audience.
- Garson O'Toole
Hemingway Didn't Say That: The Truth Behind Familiar Quotations
Media: the tongue of a nation!
- Ernest Agyemang Yeboah
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