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.
Many of the people who consented to talk about their private lives in front of millions of television viewers would say that they were sharing their stories as a way to give comfort [to] fellow sufferers, to raise public awareness, to give a voice to their pain. None of them would ever admit that it was all about ratings and voyeurism and lurid, grotesque curiosity.
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation
Millie? Does the White Clown love you?
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
We must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.
- Jon Steward
Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.
- Gore Vidal
An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
- Dan Rather
Audiences see personalities on shows interacting with wild animals as if they were not dangerous or, at the other extreme, provoking them to give viewers an adrenaline rush. Mostly, the animals just want to be left alone, so it’s not surprising that these entertainers are seriously hurt or even killed on rare occasions. On one level, it’s that very possibility the shows are selling.
- Chris Palmer
Shooting in the Wild: An Insider's Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom
I don't want Claud to tell the world how he feels about me. Television is so seductive: people tell things to the camera they'd never dream of telling their best friends
- Nicci French
The Memory Game
Where Truth Lies by Stewart Stafford
My television lost picture,
Grew lips, told the truth,
Then it finished speaking,
My voice froze after that.
My elderly self turned,
In a white, shining chair,
Cutting my lips from me,
To let the truth ooze out.
The moon in three cups,
Providence's hinterland,
The old bait-and-switch,
Shows truth has no price.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
My television lost picture,
Grew lips, told the truth,
Then it finished speaking,
My voice froze after that.
My elderly self turned,
In a white, shining chair,
Cutting my lips from me,
To let the truth ooze out.
The moon in three cups,
Providence's hinterland,
The old bait-and-switch,
Shows truth has no price.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
- Stewart Stafford
Stern reported that 51 percent of viewers could not recall a single item of news a few minutes after viewing a news program on television. Wilson found that the average television viewer could retain only 20 percent of the information contained in a fictional televised news story. Katz et al. found that 21 percent of television viewers could not recall any news items within one hour of broadcast.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The truth might hurt, but it's the only thing that matters.
- Dana Scully
Having watched the development of electronics since the 1970’s, some things have surprised me: 1. Miniaturization. 2. Low purchase costs. 3. Disposable products. 4. Screen sizes. 5. Plastic cases. 6. Long battery lives. 7. The cover-up of the biologically harmful aspects of electro-magnetic interference (EMI) exposures. 8. The prevalence of computers inside products. 9. Streaming internet television. 10. The extensive adoption of wireless cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth products.
Knocking TV. It's a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, 'What's happened to this country? Where's the level of education gone? The morality?
- Philip K. Dick
Time Out of Joint
We would not deem life too short if we always remembered that we do not have to watch TV.
If your face is being illuminated by your television or computer screen, then you should increase the illumination in your environment by moving closer to the window or by using filament light bulbs.
Kama kuna jambo la muhimu unapaswa kufanya kwa ajili ya kadari ya maisha yako na kipindi hichohicho kuna kipindi kizuri cha televisheni unakisubiria, au simu ya umbea, au kinanda cha shida, palilia bustani yako ya kiroho kwa kuachana na televisheni na simu na kufanya jambo la msingi kwa ajili ya maisha yako.
Television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing.
- Benjamin Spock
Baby and Child Care
Television is all right, I've nothing against it, but I don't like how it turns you away from the rest of the world and toward nothing but its own glassy self.
- Stephen King
The Green Mile
La televisión nunca le gustó porque no tenía poder de sugestión. Porque las imágenes, que son unívocas, no le encendían, como las palabras, la imaginación.
- Fernando Vallejo
El desbarrancadero
The vision teller tells the vision to unguarded minds' of prey. The programmed.
- T.F. Hodge
From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence
Why was Simpson called "OJ" except in some kind of branding or headlinese that said, "Look, this guy is sweet, wholseome, and nourishing (and 'Orenthal' is just too fancy)? You can have him for breakfast." (And "Sweetness" and "Sweet" are nicknames often given to black men.) Is "OJ" that far away from Jell-O? Wasn't that extended advertising campaign a way of saying you can trust our pudding because Bill Cosby likes it—sweet, wholesome, and pretty?
- David Thomson
Television: A Biography
Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic co-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
What is new is that we know so very much about the world, or at least the part of it that is most picturesquely exploding on any given day, that we're left with a desperate sense that all of it is exploding, all the time. As far as I can tell, that is the intent and purpose of television news. We see so much, understand so little, and are simultaneously told so much about What We Think, as a populace polled minute by minute, that is begins to feel like an extraneous effort to listen at all to our hearts.
- Barbara Kingsolver
Small Wonder
Many of the people who consented to talk about their private lives in front of millions of television viewers would say that they were sharing their stories as a way to give comfort [to] fellow sufferers, to raise public awareness, to give a voice to their pain. None of them would ever admit that it was all about ratings and voyeurism and lurid, grotesque curiosity.
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation
Millie? Does the White Clown love you?
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
We must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.
- Jon Steward
Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.
- Gore Vidal
An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
- Dan Rather
Audiences see personalities on shows interacting with wild animals as if they were not dangerous or, at the other extreme, provoking them to give viewers an adrenaline rush. Mostly, the animals just want to be left alone, so it’s not surprising that these entertainers are seriously hurt or even killed on rare occasions. On one level, it’s that very possibility the shows are selling.
- Chris Palmer
Shooting in the Wild: An Insider's Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom
I don't want Claud to tell the world how he feels about me. Television is so seductive: people tell things to the camera they'd never dream of telling their best friends
- Nicci French
The Memory Game
Where Truth Lies by Stewart Stafford
My television lost picture,
Grew lips, told the truth,
Then it finished speaking,
My voice froze after that.
My elderly self turned,
In a white, shining chair,
Cutting my lips from me,
To let the truth ooze out.
The moon in three cups,
Providence's hinterland,
The old bait-and-switch,
Shows truth has no price.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
My television lost picture,
Grew lips, told the truth,
Then it finished speaking,
My voice froze after that.
My elderly self turned,
In a white, shining chair,
Cutting my lips from me,
To let the truth ooze out.
The moon in three cups,
Providence's hinterland,
The old bait-and-switch,
Shows truth has no price.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
- Stewart Stafford
Stern reported that 51 percent of viewers could not recall a single item of news a few minutes after viewing a news program on television. Wilson found that the average television viewer could retain only 20 percent of the information contained in a fictional televised news story. Katz et al. found that 21 percent of television viewers could not recall any news items within one hour of broadcast.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The truth might hurt, but it's the only thing that matters.
- Dana Scully
Having watched the development of electronics since the 1970’s, some things have surprised me: 1. Miniaturization. 2. Low purchase costs. 3. Disposable products. 4. Screen sizes. 5. Plastic cases. 6. Long battery lives. 7. The cover-up of the biologically harmful aspects of electro-magnetic interference (EMI) exposures. 8. The prevalence of computers inside products. 9. Streaming internet television. 10. The extensive adoption of wireless cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth products.
Knocking TV. It's a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, 'What's happened to this country? Where's the level of education gone? The morality?
- Philip K. Dick
Time Out of Joint
We would not deem life too short if we always remembered that we do not have to watch TV.
If your face is being illuminated by your television or computer screen, then you should increase the illumination in your environment by moving closer to the window or by using filament light bulbs.
Kama kuna jambo la muhimu unapaswa kufanya kwa ajili ya kadari ya maisha yako na kipindi hichohicho kuna kipindi kizuri cha televisheni unakisubiria, au simu ya umbea, au kinanda cha shida, palilia bustani yako ya kiroho kwa kuachana na televisheni na simu na kufanya jambo la msingi kwa ajili ya maisha yako.
Television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing.
- Benjamin Spock
Baby and Child Care
Television is all right, I've nothing against it, but I don't like how it turns you away from the rest of the world and toward nothing but its own glassy self.
- Stephen King
The Green Mile
La televisión nunca le gustó porque no tenía poder de sugestión. Porque las imágenes, que son unívocas, no le encendían, como las palabras, la imaginación.
- Fernando Vallejo
El desbarrancadero
The vision teller tells the vision to unguarded minds' of prey. The programmed.
- T.F. Hodge
From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence
Why was Simpson called "OJ" except in some kind of branding or headlinese that said, "Look, this guy is sweet, wholseome, and nourishing (and 'Orenthal' is just too fancy)? You can have him for breakfast." (And "Sweetness" and "Sweet" are nicknames often given to black men.) Is "OJ" that far away from Jell-O? Wasn't that extended advertising campaign a way of saying you can trust our pudding because Bill Cosby likes it—sweet, wholesome, and pretty?
- David Thomson
Television: A Biography
Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic co-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
What is new is that we know so very much about the world, or at least the part of it that is most picturesquely exploding on any given day, that we're left with a desperate sense that all of it is exploding, all the time. As far as I can tell, that is the intent and purpose of television news. We see so much, understand so little, and are simultaneously told so much about What We Think, as a populace polled minute by minute, that is begins to feel like an extraneous effort to listen at all to our hearts.
- Barbara Kingsolver
Small Wonder
Many of the people who consented to talk about their private lives in front of millions of television viewers would say that they were sharing their stories as a way to give comfort [to] fellow sufferers, to raise public awareness, to give a voice to their pain. None of them would ever admit that it was all about ratings and voyeurism and lurid, grotesque curiosity.
- Elizabeth Wurtzel
Prozac Nation
Millie? Does the White Clown love you?
- Ray Bradbury
Fahrenheit 451
It's been suggested that if the super-naturalists really had the powers they claim, they'd win the lottery every week. I prefer to point out that they could also win a Nobel Prize for discovering fundamental physical forces hitherto unknown to science. Either way, why are they wasting their talents doing party turns on television?
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
By all means let's be open-minded, but not so open-minded that our brains drop out.
We must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.
- Jon Steward
Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.
- Gore Vidal
An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger.
- Dan Rather
Audiences see personalities on shows interacting with wild animals as if they were not dangerous or, at the other extreme, provoking them to give viewers an adrenaline rush. Mostly, the animals just want to be left alone, so it’s not surprising that these entertainers are seriously hurt or even killed on rare occasions. On one level, it’s that very possibility the shows are selling.
- Chris Palmer
Shooting in the Wild: An Insider's Account of Making Movies in the Animal Kingdom
I don't want Claud to tell the world how he feels about me. Television is so seductive: people tell things to the camera they'd never dream of telling their best friends
- Nicci French
The Memory Game
Where Truth Lies by Stewart Stafford
My television lost picture,
Grew lips, told the truth,
Then it finished speaking,
My voice froze after that.
My elderly self turned,
In a white, shining chair,
Cutting my lips from me,
To let the truth ooze out.
The moon in three cups,
Providence's hinterland,
The old bait-and-switch,
Shows truth has no price.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
My television lost picture,
Grew lips, told the truth,
Then it finished speaking,
My voice froze after that.
My elderly self turned,
In a white, shining chair,
Cutting my lips from me,
To let the truth ooze out.
The moon in three cups,
Providence's hinterland,
The old bait-and-switch,
Shows truth has no price.
© Stewart Stafford, 2022. All rights reserved.
- Stewart Stafford
Stern reported that 51 percent of viewers could not recall a single item of news a few minutes after viewing a news program on television. Wilson found that the average television viewer could retain only 20 percent of the information contained in a fictional televised news story. Katz et al. found that 21 percent of television viewers could not recall any news items within one hour of broadcast.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
The truth might hurt, but it's the only thing that matters.
- Dana Scully
Having watched the development of electronics since the 1970’s, some things have surprised me: 1. Miniaturization. 2. Low purchase costs. 3. Disposable products. 4. Screen sizes. 5. Plastic cases. 6. Long battery lives. 7. The cover-up of the biologically harmful aspects of electro-magnetic interference (EMI) exposures. 8. The prevalence of computers inside products. 9. Streaming internet television. 10. The extensive adoption of wireless cellular, Wi-Fi and Bluetooth products.
Knocking TV. It's a national pastime in itself. Think in your mind of all the homes, people sitting around saying, 'What's happened to this country? Where's the level of education gone? The morality?
- Philip K. Dick
Time Out of Joint
We would not deem life too short if we always remembered that we do not have to watch TV.
If your face is being illuminated by your television or computer screen, then you should increase the illumination in your environment by moving closer to the window or by using filament light bulbs.
Kama kuna jambo la muhimu unapaswa kufanya kwa ajili ya kadari ya maisha yako na kipindi hichohicho kuna kipindi kizuri cha televisheni unakisubiria, au simu ya umbea, au kinanda cha shida, palilia bustani yako ya kiroho kwa kuachana na televisheni na simu na kufanya jambo la msingi kwa ajili ya maisha yako.
Television is at its most trivial and, therefore, most dangerous when its aspirations are high, when it presents itself as a carrier of important cultural conversations.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
A word about TV: If a television is on, an infant will stare at it. This is not a sign of advanced development. TV entertains at a cost. Young children easily become dependent on the TV for stimulation and lose some of their natural drive to explore. A child with a plastic cup and spoon, a few wooden blocks, and a board book can think up fifty creative ways to use those objects; a child in front of a TV can only do one thing.
- Benjamin Spock
Baby and Child Care
Television is all right, I've nothing against it, but I don't like how it turns you away from the rest of the world and toward nothing but its own glassy self.
- Stephen King
The Green Mile
La televisión nunca le gustó porque no tenía poder de sugestión. Porque las imágenes, que son unívocas, no le encendían, como las palabras, la imaginación.
- Fernando Vallejo
El desbarrancadero
The vision teller tells the vision to unguarded minds' of prey. The programmed.
- T.F. Hodge
From Within I Rise: Spiritual Triumph over Death and Conscious Encounters With the Divine Presence
Why was Simpson called "OJ" except in some kind of branding or headlinese that said, "Look, this guy is sweet, wholseome, and nourishing (and 'Orenthal' is just too fancy)? You can have him for breakfast." (And "Sweetness" and "Sweet" are nicknames often given to black men.) Is "OJ" that far away from Jell-O? Wasn't that extended advertising campaign a way of saying you can trust our pudding because Bill Cosby likes it—sweet, wholesome, and pretty?
- David Thomson
Television: A Biography
Amanda Werner and several other beautiful, elegant, conically breasted foreign ladies, from unspecified vaguely defined countries, plus a few bucolic co-called humorists, comprised Buster's perpetual core of repeats. Women like Amanda Werner never made movies, never appeared in plays; they lived out their queer, beautiful lives as guests on Buster's unending show, appearing, Isidore had once calculated, as much as seventy hours a week.
What is new is that we know so very much about the world, or at least the part of it that is most picturesquely exploding on any given day, that we're left with a desperate sense that all of it is exploding, all the time. As far as I can tell, that is the intent and purpose of television news. We see so much, understand so little, and are simultaneously told so much about What We Think, as a populace polled minute by minute, that is begins to feel like an extraneous effort to listen at all to our hearts.
- Barbara Kingsolver
Small Wonder