TELEVISION QUOTES
quotations about television
Television! Teacher, mother, secret lover.
HOMER SIMPSON
The Simpsons
The number of households that own a television set is down for the first time since they started the survey. This is America! The only excuse for not having a TV in your home is, you're too fat to fit into Best Buy to get one.
JIMMY KIMMEL
Jimmy Kimmel Live!, December 1, 2011
Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object.
LAURENCE J. PETER
Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time
Summertime has arrived, and popcorn television is on us like a pack of rabid weasels. Like Santa and the elves at Christmas, sociopathic strippers and mechanical vampires frolic through the airwaves with increasing frequency until Labor Day Eve and the annual viewing of It's the Manson Girls, Charlie Brown!
GLENN GARVIN
Summer Means Time for Television to Go Bonkers", Reason, June 9, 2017
In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.
ALDOUS HUXLEY
The Doors of Perception
Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up every time.
ALFRED HITCHCOCK
attributed, A Companion to Television
IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD!
IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD!
IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND!
IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND
HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND
A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND!
HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE!
HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE!
HE CANNOT THINK--HE ONLY SEES!
ROALD DAHL
Charlie and the Chocolate Factory
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
attributed, Ray Bradbury: Uncensored!
In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance.
S. I. HAYAKAWA
attributed, A Companion to Television
Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
BILL HICKS
attributed, Words of Wisdom
Television is simply automated day-dreaming.
LEE LOVINGER
attributed, A Companion to Television
I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
ORSON WELLES
New York Herald Tribune, October 12, 1956
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
FRED ALLEN
attributed, Raised on Radio
It's been said plenty of times, but as viewers we must be mindful that television is not reality, and the lines between politics and TV are remarkably fuzzy. Instead of retaining its position as a means of political accessibility, accountability and intimacy -- as it felt in the Kennedy era -- television is rapidly turning politics into sheer entertainment. We must be vigilant that television doesn't literally become the ultimate all-pervasive embodiment of the political strategy of bread and circuses.
SHELINA ZAHRA JANMOHAMED
"Television defines contemporary political debate", The National, May 19, 2017
Television was not intended to make human beings vacuous, but it is an emanation of their vacuity.
MALCOLM MUGGERIDGE
attributed, A Companion to Television
If television once could be seen as ranking among a number of vehicles for conveying expression or information from which we could choose, we no longer have that choice: the televisual has become an intrinsic and determining element of our cultural formation.
PHILIP AUSLANDER
Liveness
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
Film as Art
Television is the force of no-history, and it holds the archives of the history of no-history. Television is a mystery. Certain of its properties are known, though. It has a scale. The scale does not vary. The trivial is raised up to the place where this scale has its home; the powerful is lowered there. In the place where this scale has its home, childish agreements can be arrived at and enforced effectively--childish agreements, and agreements wearing the mask of childhood.
GEORGE W.S. TROW
"Within the Context of No-Context"
People only know what they see on TV.
CARMELLO ANTHONY
Esquire, January 2005
It is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
T. S. ELIOT
New York Post, September 22, 1963