“[M]ost of our daily news is inert, consisting of information that gives us something to talk about but cannot lead to any meaningful action. (68).”
Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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Neil Postman 106
American writer and academic 1931–2003Related quotes
“Stop giving meaningless praise and start giving meaningful action.”
Source: Life, the Truth, and Being Free (2010), p. 44

23 March 2010 https://twitter.com/gtdguy/status/10943941311
Official Twitter profile (@gtdguy) https://twitter.com/gtdguy

L’extrême plaisir que nous prenons à parler de nous-mêmes nous doit faire craindre de n’en donner guere à ceux qui nous écoutent.
Translation by E.H. Blackmore et. al., in Collected Maxims and Other Reflections, de La Rochefoucauld, Oxford University Press (2008) : ISBN 019162313X
Maxim 314
Reflections; or Sentences and Moral Maxims (1665–1678)
Heppenstall, Rayner. Goodman, Jonathan (ed.). The Master Eccentric: The Journals of Rayner Heppenstall, 1969-1981. London: Allison & Busby. 1986. pg. 21. ISBN 0-85031-536-0

The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Six, Liberating Knowledge: News from the Frontiers of Science

Nature and the Greeks (1954)
Context: I am very astonished that the scientific picture of the real world around me is deficient. It gives a lot of factual information, puts all our experience in a magnificently consistent order, but it is ghastly silent about all and sundry that is really near to our heart, that really matters to us. It cannot tell us a word about red and blue, bitter and sweet, physical pain and physical delight; it knows nothing of beautiful and ugly, good or bad, God and eternity. Science sometimes pretends to answer questions in these domains, but the answers are very often so silly that we are not inclined to take them seriously.
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 5.