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 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.
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished.
- John Grooters
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
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
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 -
Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all.
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
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.
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.
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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
shall I spend much of your time pointing out the degree to which televisual values influence the contemporary mood of jaded weltschmerz, self-mocking materialism, blank indifference, and the delusion that cynicism and naïveté are mutually exclusive?
- David Foster Wallace
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
Television has a satanic influence.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
Conversations with Yogananda: Stories, Sayings and Wisdom
We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.
The sky was thick with TV. If you wore special glasses you could see them spinning through the sky among the bats and homing birds—blondes, wars, famines, football, food shows, coups d'état, hairstyles stiff with hair spray. Designer pectorals. Gliding towards Ayemenem like skydivers. Making patterns in the sky. Wheels. Windmills. Flowers blooming and unblooming.
- Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
You don't talk; you watch talk shows. You don't play games; you watch game shows.
Travel, relationships, risk: Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance, so that you can remain ever sheltered, ever passive, ever ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.
Travel, relationships, risk: Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance, so that you can remain ever sheltered, ever passive, ever ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.
- Brad Bird
What is friendship but a mutual respect with a smattering of envy.
Emma Beers Jones
Emma Beers Jones
- Maria P Frino
Fame & Other Disasters
And with Letterman, Miller, Shandling, and Leno’s battery of hip, sardonic, this-is-
just-TV schticks, the circle back to the days of “We’ve just got to get Miss Ball on our show, Bud” has closed and come spiral, television’s power to jettison connection and castrate protest fueled by the very ironic
postmodern self-consciousness it had first helped fashion.
just-TV schticks, the circle back to the days of “We’ve just got to get Miss Ball on our show, Bud” has closed and come spiral, television’s power to jettison connection and castrate protest fueled by the very ironic
postmodern self-consciousness it had first helped fashion.
- David Foster Wallace
E Unibus Pluram
..Octopuses appear to enjoy watching Many home aquarists report that their octopuses appear to enjoy watching television with them. They particularly like sports and cartoons, with lots of movement and color....King and her coauthor, Colin Dunlop, even suggest placing the tank in the same room as the TV, so owner and octopus can enjoy programs together.
- Sy Montgomery
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
...and she wipes weary from her eyes
still glued to the no-good
glued to the high definition glare
of low-definition life
still glued to the no-good
glued to the high definition glare
of low-definition life
- Jason Griffin
Ain't Burned All the Bright
Films and television let us experience other lives vicariously, or perhaps voyeuristically, as we watch those lives play out. But in a novel, we can become those characters, we can identify from the inside with someone whose life is radically different from our own. Best of all, when it’s over … we get to be ourselves again, changed slightly or profoundly by the experience, possessed of new insights perhaps, but recognizably us once more.
- Thomas C. Foster
How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form
Robert lay on the bed and checked the remote to see the time on the television screen. Other than that function, the black box was completely useless, another tool of control.
- Kenneth Eade
An Evil Trade
It's a cartoon but it's got like the whole meaning of life in it. (road runner) I mean, what doe it tell you? It tells you that your body can be broken but it will mend. It tells you that if you do bad things they will rebound on you. It tells you that death is the end. It tells you that you can walk on air, as long as you don't realize you're doing it.
- Nick Lake
Satellite
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.
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished.
- John Grooters
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
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
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 -
Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all.
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
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.
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.
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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
shall I spend much of your time pointing out the degree to which televisual values influence the contemporary mood of jaded weltschmerz, self-mocking materialism, blank indifference, and the delusion that cynicism and naïveté are mutually exclusive?
- David Foster Wallace
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
Television has a satanic influence.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
Conversations with Yogananda: Stories, Sayings and Wisdom
We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.
The sky was thick with TV. If you wore special glasses you could see them spinning through the sky among the bats and homing birds—blondes, wars, famines, football, food shows, coups d'état, hairstyles stiff with hair spray. Designer pectorals. Gliding towards Ayemenem like skydivers. Making patterns in the sky. Wheels. Windmills. Flowers blooming and unblooming.
- Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
You don't talk; you watch talk shows. You don't play games; you watch game shows.
Travel, relationships, risk: Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance, so that you can remain ever sheltered, ever passive, ever ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.
Travel, relationships, risk: Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance, so that you can remain ever sheltered, ever passive, ever ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.
- Brad Bird
What is friendship but a mutual respect with a smattering of envy.
Emma Beers Jones
Emma Beers Jones
- Maria P Frino
Fame & Other Disasters
And with Letterman, Miller, Shandling, and Leno’s battery of hip, sardonic, this-is-
just-TV schticks, the circle back to the days of “We’ve just got to get Miss Ball on our show, Bud” has closed and come spiral, television’s power to jettison connection and castrate protest fueled by the very ironic
postmodern self-consciousness it had first helped fashion.
just-TV schticks, the circle back to the days of “We’ve just got to get Miss Ball on our show, Bud” has closed and come spiral, television’s power to jettison connection and castrate protest fueled by the very ironic
postmodern self-consciousness it had first helped fashion.
- David Foster Wallace
E Unibus Pluram
..Octopuses appear to enjoy watching Many home aquarists report that their octopuses appear to enjoy watching television with them. They particularly like sports and cartoons, with lots of movement and color....King and her coauthor, Colin Dunlop, even suggest placing the tank in the same room as the TV, so owner and octopus can enjoy programs together.
- Sy Montgomery
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
...and she wipes weary from her eyes
still glued to the no-good
glued to the high definition glare
of low-definition life
still glued to the no-good
glued to the high definition glare
of low-definition life
- Jason Griffin
Ain't Burned All the Bright
Films and television let us experience other lives vicariously, or perhaps voyeuristically, as we watch those lives play out. But in a novel, we can become those characters, we can identify from the inside with someone whose life is radically different from our own. Best of all, when it’s over … we get to be ourselves again, changed slightly or profoundly by the experience, possessed of new insights perhaps, but recognizably us once more.
- Thomas C. Foster
How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form
Robert lay on the bed and checked the remote to see the time on the television screen. Other than that function, the black box was completely useless, another tool of control.
- Kenneth Eade
An Evil Trade
It's a cartoon but it's got like the whole meaning of life in it. (road runner) I mean, what doe it tell you? It tells you that your body can be broken but it will mend. It tells you that if you do bad things they will rebound on you. It tells you that death is the end. It tells you that you can walk on air, as long as you don't realize you're doing it.
- Nick Lake
Satellite
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.
With television, we vault ourselves into a continuous, incoherent present.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
Good film, television, or music keeps you awake, anxious for the next movement or act, and wanting more when it is finished.
- John Grooters
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
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
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 -
Some stories have to be written because no one would believe the absurdity of it all.
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
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.
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.
I should go so far as to say that embedded in the surrealistic frame of a television news show is a theory of anticommunication, featuring a type of discourse that abandons logic, reason, sequence and rules of contradiction. In aesthetics, I believe the name given to this theory is Dadaism; in philosophy, nihilism; in psychiatry, schizophrenia. In the parlance of the theater, it is known as vaudeville.
- Neil Postman
Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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
shall I spend much of your time pointing out the degree to which televisual values influence the contemporary mood of jaded weltschmerz, self-mocking materialism, blank indifference, and the delusion that cynicism and naïveté are mutually exclusive?
- David Foster Wallace
A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again: Essays and Arguments
Television has a satanic influence.
- Paramahansa Yogananda
Conversations with Yogananda: Stories, Sayings and Wisdom
We're all watching each other, so there's no chance for censorship. The main problem is the idiot TV. If you watch local news, your head will turn to mush.
The sky was thick with TV. If you wore special glasses you could see them spinning through the sky among the bats and homing birds—blondes, wars, famines, football, food shows, coups d'état, hairstyles stiff with hair spray. Designer pectorals. Gliding towards Ayemenem like skydivers. Making patterns in the sky. Wheels. Windmills. Flowers blooming and unblooming.
- Arundhati Roy
The God of Small Things
You don't talk; you watch talk shows. You don't play games; you watch game shows.
Travel, relationships, risk: Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance, so that you can remain ever sheltered, ever passive, ever ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.
Travel, relationships, risk: Every meaningful experience must be packaged and delivered to you to watch at a distance, so that you can remain ever sheltered, ever passive, ever ravenous consumers who can't bring themselves to rise from their couches, break a sweat, and participate in life.
- Brad Bird
What is friendship but a mutual respect with a smattering of envy.
Emma Beers Jones
Emma Beers Jones
- Maria P Frino
Fame & Other Disasters
And with Letterman, Miller, Shandling, and Leno’s battery of hip, sardonic, this-is-
just-TV schticks, the circle back to the days of “We’ve just got to get Miss Ball on our show, Bud” has closed and come spiral, television’s power to jettison connection and castrate protest fueled by the very ironic
postmodern self-consciousness it had first helped fashion.
just-TV schticks, the circle back to the days of “We’ve just got to get Miss Ball on our show, Bud” has closed and come spiral, television’s power to jettison connection and castrate protest fueled by the very ironic
postmodern self-consciousness it had first helped fashion.
- David Foster Wallace
E Unibus Pluram
..Octopuses appear to enjoy watching Many home aquarists report that their octopuses appear to enjoy watching television with them. They particularly like sports and cartoons, with lots of movement and color....King and her coauthor, Colin Dunlop, even suggest placing the tank in the same room as the TV, so owner and octopus can enjoy programs together.
- Sy Montgomery
The Soul of an Octopus: A Surprising Exploration into the Wonder of Consciousness
...and she wipes weary from her eyes
still glued to the no-good
glued to the high definition glare
of low-definition life
still glued to the no-good
glued to the high definition glare
of low-definition life
- Jason Griffin
Ain't Burned All the Bright
Films and television let us experience other lives vicariously, or perhaps voyeuristically, as we watch those lives play out. But in a novel, we can become those characters, we can identify from the inside with someone whose life is radically different from our own. Best of all, when it’s over … we get to be ourselves again, changed slightly or profoundly by the experience, possessed of new insights perhaps, but recognizably us once more.
- Thomas C. Foster
How to Read Novels Like a Professor: A Jaunty Exploration of the World's Favorite Literary Form
Robert lay on the bed and checked the remote to see the time on the television screen. Other than that function, the black box was completely useless, another tool of control.
- Kenneth Eade
An Evil Trade
It's a cartoon but it's got like the whole meaning of life in it. (road runner) I mean, what doe it tell you? It tells you that your body can be broken but it will mend. It tells you that if you do bad things they will rebound on you. It tells you that death is the end. It tells you that you can walk on air, as long as you don't realize you're doing it.
- Nick Lake
Satellite