Neil Postman Quotes

Quotes about:

Age Books Childhood Children Community Computers Culture

Television is altering the meaning of 'being informed' by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. Disinformation does not mean false information. It means misleading information - misplaced, irrelevant, fragmented or superficial information - information that creates the illusion of knowing something, but which in fact leads one away from knowing.

Neil Postman

Mean, Creating, Knowing

Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.93, Penguin

64 Copy quote
What Orwell feared were those who would ban books. What Huxley feared was that there would be no reason to ban a book, for there would be no one who wanted to read one. Orwell feared those who would deprive us of information. Huxley feared those who would give us so much that we would be reduced to passivity and egoism. Orwell feared that the truth would be concealed from us. Huxley feared the truth would be drowned in a sea of irrelevance.

Neil Postman

Truth, Fear, Book

"Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". Book by Neil Postman, 1985.

83 Copy quote
When a population becomes distracted by trivia, when cultural life is redefined as a perpetual round of entertainments, when serious public conversation becomes a form of baby-talk, when, in short, a people become an audience, and their public business a vaudeville act, then a nation finds itself at risk; culture-death is a clear possibility.

Neil Postman

Baby, People, Risk

Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.129, Penguin

70 Copy quote
Once you have learned to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.

Neil Postman

Teacher, Teaching, Learning

Neil Postman (2009). “Teaching As a Subversive Activity: A No-Holds-Barred Assault on Outdated Teaching Methods-with Dramatic and Practical Proposals on How Education Can Be Made Relevant to Today's World”, p.38, Delta

36 Copy quote
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.

Neil Postman

Education, Children, Reading

Neil Postman (2011). “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School”, p.70, Vintage

68 Copy quote
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 comercials.

Neil Postman

Ideas, Looks, Arguing

65 Copy quote
Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even much popular notice. The result is that we are a people on the verge of amusing ourselves to death.

Neil Postman

People, Culture, News

Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.18, Penguin

26 Copy quote
It is a mistake to suppose that any technological innovation has a one-sided effect. Every technology is both a burden and a blessing; not either-or, but this-and-that.

Neil Postman

Mistake, Technology, Blessing

Neil Postman (2011). “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”, p.14, Vintage

28 Copy quote
We are more naive than those of the Middle Ages, and more frightened, for we can be made to believe almost anything.

Neil Postman

Believe, Age, Middle

"Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". Book by Neil Postman, 1985.

42 Copy quote
Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.

Neil Postman

Television Watching, Skills, Television

Neil Postman (2011). “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future”, p.201, Vintage

7 Copy quote
If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.

Neil Postman

Technology, Sound, Adults

"Neil Postman Ponders High Tech". Online Newshour: Online Forum, www.faculty.rsu.edu. January 17, 1996.

54 Copy quote
At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.

Neil Postman

Love, Life, Family

Neil Postman (2011). “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School”, p.10, Vintage

39 Copy quote
Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration.

Neil Postman

Technology, Technological Change, Ideas

4 Copy quote
Everything we know has its origins in questions. Questions, we might say, are the principal intellectual instruments available to human beings.

Neil Postman

Intellectual, Might, Instruments

Neil Postman (2011). “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School”, p.173, Vintage

42 Copy quote
Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas. Like language itself, a technology predisposes us to favor and value certain perspectives and accomplishments and to subordinate others. Every technology has a philosophy, which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards.

Neil Postman

Powerful, Philosophy, Technology

Neil Postman (2011). “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School”, p.192, Vintage

16 Copy quote
If parents wish to preserve childhood for their own children, they must conceive of parenting as an act of rebellion against culture

Neil Postman

Children, Parenting, Childhood

Neil Postman (2011). “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future”, p.138, Vintage

60 Copy quote
People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

Neil Postman

Inspirational, People, Problem

Neil Postman (2011). “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School”, p.96, Vintage

39 Copy quote
Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.

Neil Postman

Information, Entertainment, Commodity

24 Copy quote
But in the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its story of our origins and of our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. To the question, "How did it all begin?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living. Moreover, the science-god has no answer to the question, "Why are we here?" and, to the question, "What moral instructions do you give us?", the science-god maintains silence.

Neil Postman

God, People, Giving

18 Copy quote
. . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.

Neil Postman

People, World, Wells

Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.106, Penguin

8 Copy quote
It is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized by technological diversions.

Neil Postman

Contradiction, Technological, Diversion

58 Copy quote
Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.

Neil Postman

Believe, Ignorant, Mind

"Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". Book by Neil Postman, 1985.

41 Copy quote
The shock of twentieth-century technology numbed our brains and we are just beginning to notice the spiritual and social debris that our technology has strewn about us.

Neil Postman

Spiritual, Technology, Brain

Neil Postman (2011). “The Disappearance of Childhood”, p.146, Vintage

24 Copy quote
There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined, active, and thoroughly engaged unless he perceives a problem to be a problem or whatever is to-be-learned as worth learning, and unless he plays an active role in determining the process of solution.

Neil Postman

Play, Roles, Way

Neil Postman (2009). “Teaching As a Subversive Activity: A No-Holds-Barred Assault on Outdated Teaching Methods-with Dramatic and Practical Proposals on How Education Can Be Made Relevant to Today's World”, p.71, Delta

29 Copy quote
Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

Neil Postman

Laughter, Sea, Voice

39 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Marshall McLuhan

Douglas Rushkoff

Neil Postman

Follow

Born: March 8, 1931
Died: October 5, 2003
Occupation: Author
Cite this Page: Citation

Popular Topics