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.
The American renaissance begins with the unified revolutionary act of turning off and smashing the television, rejecting Hollywood on all fronts and refusing to intellectually ingest the toxic force feed of the establishment minority’s matrix narrative.
- James Scott, Senior Fellow, The Center for Cyber I.1
If those who cause destruction have come to be ‘newsworthy’, and those who heal the devastation of that destruction have come to be less than ‘noteworthy’, has our thirst to be entertained become the truly destructive thing?
- Craig D. Lounsbrough.2
How you feel after watching something indicates not what you watched but where you are at.
- A.D. Posey.3
If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.
- Gerald Durrell.4
It’s television, after all. No one is dead, even when they die.
- Chris Campanioni.5
Death Of Art
Police are killing black men. Mona Scott-Young is killing black women.
- Darnell Lamont Walker.6
Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
- Hunter S. Thompson.7
Television. Maybe it was all a study in the art of mummification. The effect of the medium is so evanescent that those who work in its time apparatus feel the need to preserve themselves, delivering their bodies to be lacquered and trussed, sprayed with the rarest of pressurized jellies, all to one end, a release from the perilous context of time. This is their only vanity, to expect to dwell forever in hermetic sub-corridors, free of every ravage, secure as old kings asleep in sodium.
- Don DeLillo.8
Great Jones Street
And yet that's the best way to watch television actively: with your eyes closed.
- Jean-Philippe Toussaint.9
Television
Ah man. I remember the days of lying to my mother about a boy. Once I had a boy hidden in the closet and of course Mom wouldn't leave, so I finally had to pretend to get sick to my stomach just to get her out of the room long enough for him to climb out the window and down the tree. He fell, broke his leg. Ah, to be young again.
- Amy Sherman-Palladino.10
Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle...Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been.
- Susan Orlean.11
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
- Chuck Palahniuk.12
Damned
Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.
- Kurt Vonnegut.13
Y la cuestión es ésta: la televisión invierte la evolución de lo sensible en inteligible y lo convierte en el ictu oculi, en un regreso al puro y simple acto de ver. La televisión produce imágenes y anula los conceptos, y de este modo atrofia nuestra capacidad de abstracción y con ella toda nuestra capacidad de entender.
- Giovanni Sartori.14
Homo videns: La sociedad teledirigida
Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
- Bill Hicks.15
If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?
- Warren Ellis.16
Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
- Alfred Hitchcock.17
Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant.
- Tara Bray Smith.18
If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence.
- Shannon L. Alder.19
Kill your television!
- Paul Thomas Anderson.20
Magnolia: The Shooting Script
El problema es que el niño es una esponja que registra y absorbe indiscriminadamente todo lo que ve [...] El niño formado en la imagen se reduce a ser un hombre que no lee, y, por lo tanto, la mayoría de las veces, es un ser «reblandecido por la televisión», adicto de por vida a los videojuegos.
- Giovanni Sartori.21
Homo videns: La sociedad teledirigida
Television characters live inside our minds as though they're actual people. In fact, we know more about them than we do about most people in our physical lives.
- Neal Pollack.22
Robin, a mother really loves her children only if she loves them enough to let go. I didn't have children as annuities against loneliness in my old age. They were part of my youth—the wonderful thing I had with your father. Now they must have their youth and their children.
- Jacqueline Susann.23
The Love Machine
The Catholic faith gives such hope and solace to its followers as they seek salvation through a litany of shalts and shalt nots, but compassion for our fellows is a quality that requires little knowledge and is, I thin, the true redemption, after all.
- Mary Tyler Moore.24
After All
The American renaissance begins with the unified revolutionary act of turning off and smashing the television, rejecting Hollywood on all fronts and refusing to intellectually ingest the toxic force feed of the establishment minority’s matrix narrative.
- James Scott, Senior Fellow, The Center for Cyber I.1
If those who cause destruction have come to be ‘newsworthy’, and those who heal the devastation of that destruction have come to be less than ‘noteworthy’, has our thirst to be entertained become the truly destructive thing?
- Craig D. Lounsbrough.2
How you feel after watching something indicates not what you watched but where you are at.
- A.D. Posey.3
If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.
- Gerald Durrell.4
It’s television, after all. No one is dead, even when they die.
- Chris Campanioni.5
Death Of Art
Police are killing black men. Mona Scott-Young is killing black women.
- Darnell Lamont Walker.6
Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
- Hunter S. Thompson.7
Television. Maybe it was all a study in the art of mummification. The effect of the medium is so evanescent that those who work in its time apparatus feel the need to preserve themselves, delivering their bodies to be lacquered and trussed, sprayed with the rarest of pressurized jellies, all to one end, a release from the perilous context of time. This is their only vanity, to expect to dwell forever in hermetic sub-corridors, free of every ravage, secure as old kings asleep in sodium.
- Don DeLillo.8
Great Jones Street
And yet that's the best way to watch television actively: with your eyes closed.
- Jean-Philippe Toussaint.9
Television
Ah man. I remember the days of lying to my mother about a boy. Once I had a boy hidden in the closet and of course Mom wouldn't leave, so I finally had to pretend to get sick to my stomach just to get her out of the room long enough for him to climb out the window and down the tree. He fell, broke his leg. Ah, to be young again.
- Amy Sherman-Palladino.10
Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle...Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been.
- Susan Orlean.11
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
- Chuck Palahniuk.12
Damned
Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.
- Kurt Vonnegut.13
Y la cuestión es ésta: la televisión invierte la evolución de lo sensible en inteligible y lo convierte en el ictu oculi, en un regreso al puro y simple acto de ver. La televisión produce imágenes y anula los conceptos, y de este modo atrofia nuestra capacidad de abstracción y con ella toda nuestra capacidad de entender.
- Giovanni Sartori.14
Homo videns: La sociedad teledirigida
Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
- Bill Hicks.15
If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?
- Warren Ellis.16
Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
- Alfred Hitchcock.17
Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant.
- Tara Bray Smith.18
If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence.
- Shannon L. Alder.19
Kill your television!
- Paul Thomas Anderson.20
Magnolia: The Shooting Script
El problema es que el niño es una esponja que registra y absorbe indiscriminadamente todo lo que ve [...] El niño formado en la imagen se reduce a ser un hombre que no lee, y, por lo tanto, la mayoría de las veces, es un ser «reblandecido por la televisión», adicto de por vida a los videojuegos.
- Giovanni Sartori.21
Homo videns: La sociedad teledirigida
Television characters live inside our minds as though they're actual people. In fact, we know more about them than we do about most people in our physical lives.
- Neal Pollack.22
Robin, a mother really loves her children only if she loves them enough to let go. I didn't have children as annuities against loneliness in my old age. They were part of my youth—the wonderful thing I had with your father. Now they must have their youth and their children.
- Jacqueline Susann.23
The Love Machine
The Catholic faith gives such hope and solace to its followers as they seek salvation through a litany of shalts and shalt nots, but compassion for our fellows is a quality that requires little knowledge and is, I thin, the true redemption, after all.
- Mary Tyler Moore.24
After All
The American renaissance begins with the unified revolutionary act of turning off and smashing the television, rejecting Hollywood on all fronts and refusing to intellectually ingest the toxic force feed of the establishment minority’s matrix narrative.
- James Scott, Senior Fellow, The Center for Cyber I.1
If those who cause destruction have come to be ‘newsworthy’, and those who heal the devastation of that destruction have come to be less than ‘noteworthy’, has our thirst to be entertained become the truly destructive thing?
- Craig D. Lounsbrough.2
How you feel after watching something indicates not what you watched but where you are at.
- A.D. Posey.3
If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.
- Gerald Durrell.4
It’s television, after all. No one is dead, even when they die.
- Chris Campanioni.5
Death Of Art
Police are killing black men. Mona Scott-Young is killing black women.
- Darnell Lamont Walker.6
Watching TV becomes a full-time job when you can scan 200 channels all day and all night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems dull.
- Hunter S. Thompson.7
Television. Maybe it was all a study in the art of mummification. The effect of the medium is so evanescent that those who work in its time apparatus feel the need to preserve themselves, delivering their bodies to be lacquered and trussed, sprayed with the rarest of pressurized jellies, all to one end, a release from the perilous context of time. This is their only vanity, to expect to dwell forever in hermetic sub-corridors, free of every ravage, secure as old kings asleep in sodium.
- Don DeLillo.8
Great Jones Street
And yet that's the best way to watch television actively: with your eyes closed.
- Jean-Philippe Toussaint.9
Television
Ah man. I remember the days of lying to my mother about a boy. Once I had a boy hidden in the closet and of course Mom wouldn't leave, so I finally had to pretend to get sick to my stomach just to get her out of the room long enough for him to climb out the window and down the tree. He fell, broke his leg. Ah, to be young again.
- Amy Sherman-Palladino.10
Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle...Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been.
- Susan Orlean.11
Rin Tin Tin: The Life and the Legend
Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
- Chuck Palahniuk.12
Damned
Moderate giftedness has been made worthless by the printing press and radio and television and satellites and all that. A moderately gifted person who would have been a community treasure a thousand years ago has to give up, has to go into some other line of work, since modern communications put him or her into daily competition with nothing but the world's champions.
- Kurt Vonnegut.13
Y la cuestión es ésta: la televisión invierte la evolución de lo sensible en inteligible y lo convierte en el ictu oculi, en un regreso al puro y simple acto de ver. La televisión produce imágenes y anula los conceptos, y de este modo atrofia nuestra capacidad de abstracción y con ella toda nuestra capacidad de entender.
- Giovanni Sartori.14
Homo videns: La sociedad teledirigida
Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
- Bill Hicks.15
If you believe that your thoughts originate inside your brain, do you also believe that television shows are made inside your television set?
- Warren Ellis.16
Seeing a murder on television... can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
- Alfred Hitchcock.17
Reading, for me, is like this: consumptive, pleasing, calming, as much as edifying. It's how I feel after a good dinner. That's why I do it so often: It feels wonderful. The book is mind and I insert myself into it, cover it entire, ear my way through every last slash and dot. That's something you can do with a book, unlike television or movies or the Internet. You can eat it, or mark it, like a dog does on a hydrant.
- Tara Bray Smith.18
If you were born with the ability to change someone’s perspective or emotions, never waste that gift. It is one of the most powerful gifts God can give—the ability to influence.
- Shannon L. Alder.19
Kill your television!
- Paul Thomas Anderson.20
Magnolia: The Shooting Script
El problema es que el niño es una esponja que registra y absorbe indiscriminadamente todo lo que ve [...] El niño formado en la imagen se reduce a ser un hombre que no lee, y, por lo tanto, la mayoría de las veces, es un ser «reblandecido por la televisión», adicto de por vida a los videojuegos.
- Giovanni Sartori.21
Homo videns: La sociedad teledirigida
Television characters live inside our minds as though they're actual people. In fact, we know more about them than we do about most people in our physical lives.
- Neal Pollack.22
Robin, a mother really loves her children only if she loves them enough to let go. I didn't have children as annuities against loneliness in my old age. They were part of my youth—the wonderful thing I had with your father. Now they must have their youth and their children.
- Jacqueline Susann.23
The Love Machine
The Catholic faith gives such hope and solace to its followers as they seek salvation through a litany of shalts and shalt nots, but compassion for our fellows is a quality that requires little knowledge and is, I thin, the true redemption, after all.
- Mary Tyler Moore.24
After All
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