Television Quotes - Page 3

• Television is the menace that everyone loves to hate but can't seem to live without.

  Paddy Chayefsky

  Hate, One Love, Menace

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• By the age of six the average child will have completed the basic American education.... From television, the child will have learned how to pick a lock, commit a fairly elaborate bank holdup, prevent wetness all day long, get the laundry twice as white, and kill people with a variety of sophisticated armaments.

  John F. Kennedy

  Children, School, Average

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• It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.

  Rod Serling

  Funny, Dance, Humor

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• Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.

  Bill Gates

  Inspirational, Life, Inspiring

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• The marvels - of film, radio, and television - are marvels of one-way communication, which is not communication at all.

  Milton Mayer

  Communication, Radio, Way

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• The audience is never wrong.

  Carol Burnett

  Audience

  "Fictional character: J.M. Barrie". The Lost Boys, www.imdb.com. (1978 - ).

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• Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality.

  Rupert Murdoch

  Reflection, Quality, Taste

  Rupert Murdoch's address to the Edinburgh Television Festival, 1989.

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• Television is a new, hard test of our wisdom. If we succeed in mastering the new medium it will enrich us. But it can also put our mind to sleep. We must not forget that in the past the inability to transport immediate experience and to convey it to others made the use of language necessary and thus compelled the human mind to develop concepts. For in order to describe things one must draw the general from the specific; one must select, compare, think. When communication can be achieved by pointing with the finger, however, the mouth grows silent, the writing hand stops, and the mind shrinks.

  Rudolf Arnheim

  Communication, Sleep, Writing

  Rudolf Arnheim (1957). “Film as Art”, p.195, Univ of California Press

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• What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish.

  W. H. Auden

  Art, Media, Political

  "The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays" by W. H. Auden, ("The Poet & The City"), (p. 83), 1962.

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• The role of television is the illusion of company, noise. I call it the fifth wall and the second window: the window of illusion.

  Mumia Abu-Jamal

  Wall, Roles, Noise

  FaceBook post by Mumia Abu Jamal from Sep 02, 2011

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• Imitation is the sincerest form of television.

  Fred Allen

  Witty, Powerful, Humorous

  Quoted in Newsweek, 14 Jan. 1980

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• When television is good, nothing is better. When it's bad, nothing is worse.

  Newton N. Minow

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• The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.

  Ray Bradbury

  Night, People, Political

  "The Murderer". Short story by Ray Bradbury, 1953.

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• Television has some lovely aspects to it - and some ghastly aspects - but the theater itself was a wonderful invention.

  Patrick Macnee

  Lovely, Style, Wonderful

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• Television makes so much at its worst that it can't afford to do its best.

  Fred W. Friendly

  Worst

  U.S. News & World Report, June 12, 1967.

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• 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

  Funny, Death, Sarcastic

  Alfred Hitchcock, Sidney Gottlieb (1997). “Hitchcock on Hitchcock: Selected Writings and Interviews”, p.58, Univ of California Press

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• I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.

  Orson Welles

  Business, Hate, Nuts

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• Television could perform a great service in mass education, but there's no indication its sponsors have anything like this on their minds.

  Tallulah Bankhead

  Media, Political, Mind

  Tallulah Bankhead (1952). “Tallulah: My Autobiography”, p.12, Univ. Press of Mississippi

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• If you want to use television to teach somebody, you must first teach them how to use television.

  Umberto Eco

  Use, Want, Firsts

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• Everything is for the eye these days - TV, Life, Look, the movies. Nothing is just for the mind. The next generation will have eyeballs as big as cantaloupes and no brain at all.

  Fred Allen

  Eye, Brain, Mind

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• Television is the triumph of machine over people.

  Fred Allen

  Funny, Humor, People

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• Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs.

  Alfred Hitchcock

  Funny, Witty, Smart

  In Observer 19 Dec. 1965

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• Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.

  Laurence J. Peter

  Funny, Wisdom, Children

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• Television – a medium. So called because it is neither rare nor well done.

  Ernie Kovacs

  Inspirational, Funny, Humor

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• Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know.

  Marvin Minsky

  Would Be, Tvs, Imagine

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