Quotes about television
page 3

“Jesus does not want us floating through space or sitting in front of our televisions. Jesus wants us interacting, eating together, laughing together, praying together. Loneliness is something that came with the fall.”

Donald Miller book Blue Like Jazz: nonreligious thoughts on Christian spirituality

Blue Like Jazz (2003, Nelson Books)

Loneliness

“For the first time in television a writer will have the opportunity to let his imagination take him where ever he wants to. The sky is no longer the limit.”

Rod Serling (1924–1975) American screenwriter

Rod Serling: American Masters.
Other

Imagination, Time

“During the daily peak viewing periods, television in the main insulates us from the realities of the world in which we live. If this state of affairs continues, we may alter an advertising slogan to read: LOOK NOW AND PAY LATER.
For surely we shall pay for using this most powerful instrument of communication to insulate the citizenry from the hard and demanding realities which must be faced if we are to survive. I mean the word survive literally.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

World, Communication, Reality, Reading

“Apollo is the greatest adventure of all humankind, and it needs to be recorded in every way possible for future generations in books, in movies and on television. … I’m an artist. That’s the way I care about things. Maybe 200 years from now, someone will say, "I’m glad he did that."”

Alan Bean (1932–2018) American astronaut and painter

After the moon, art is his mission (1997)

Books, Way, Future

“Anything negative about the country or the regime will be rapidly erased from the collective memory. This memory deletion is being carried out by censoring newspapers, magazines, television news, the Internet and anything that preserves memories.”

Yan Lianke (1958) Chinese novelist and satirist

"On China's State-Sponsored Amnesia"

Memory, Country

“Canned laughter: After some supposedly funny or witty remark you can hear the laughter and applause included in the soundtrack of the show itself - here we have the exact counterpart of the Chorus in classical tragedy; it is here that we have to look for 'living Antiquity.' That is to say, why this laughter? The first possible answer - that it serves to remind us when to laugh - is interesting enough, because it implies the paradox that laughter is a matter of duty and not of some spontaneous feeling; but this answer is not sufficient because we do not usually laugh. The only correct answer would be that the Other - embodied in the television set - is relieving us even of our duty to laugh - is instead laughing for us. So even if, tired from a hard days stupid work, all evening we did nothing but gaze drowsily into the television screen, we can say afterwards that objectively, through the medium of the other, we had a really good time.”

Slavoj Žižek book The Sublime Object of Ideology

33
The Sublime Object of Ideology (1989)

Stupidity, Feeling, Laughter, Time

“Material production - the production, for example, or cars, televisions, clothing, and food - creates the means of social life. … Immaterial production, by contrast, including the production of ideas, knowledges, communication, cooperation, and affective relations, tends to create not the means of social life but social life itself.”

Antonio Negri book Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

146
Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire

Life, Food, Cars, Communication

“The audience is unpredictable, and the people who produce and distribute the artistic work have no real contact with it. They market the work in large quantities as with books and records, or through a mechanical system, as with radio and television, so that they could not, if they tried, know audience members personally.”

Howard S. Becker (1928) American sociologist

Source: Art Worlds (1982), p. 125.

People, Books, Personality

“(Television) The insurance industry is perfectly willing to stop discriminating against women, if some other group would volunteer to take their place.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

(p. 31)
Sylvia cartoon strip

Women

“we made love on the living room floor
with the noise in the background of a televised war
and in that defeaning pleasure i thought i heard someone say
if we walk away they'll walk away”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

landlocked blues
I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning (2005)

Love, War, Pleasure

“People talk about that catch and, I've said this many times, that I've made better catches than that many times in regular season. But of course in my time, you didn't have a lot of television during the regular season. A lot of people didn't see me do a lot of things.”

Willie Mays (1931) Baseball player

Academy of Achievement Interview (1996)

People, Time, Season

“While I was playing WoW after dinner at mother’s house once, I heard my sister watching the new show Avatar: The Last Airbender on the television. I decided to check it out. I soon found myself really enjoying it. It was a magnificent story set in a fantasy world where people can control the power of the elements. Once I watched the first episode, I was hooked on the story. Prince Zuko was my favorite character; he was a banished prince who was trying to regain his rightful place in the world. I always related to him. Avatar: The Last Airbender became my favorite T. V. show.”

Elliot Rodger (1991–2014) American spree killer

My Twisted World (2014), Pastimes

People, World, Sister, Housing

“The worst thing about this modern world is that people think you get killed on television with zero pain and zero blood. It must enter into kids' heads that it's not very messy to kill somebody, and it doesn't hurt that much. That's a real sickness to me. That's a real sick thing.”

David Lynch (1946) American filmmaker, television director, visual artist, musician and occasional actor

As quoted in "Dark Lens on America" in The New York Times Magazine (14 January 1990) http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C0CE0D6113FF937A25752C0A966958260&sec=&spon=&pagewanted=all

Pain, People, World, Thinking

“[On the need for ultra high definition television] The problem with television isn't the number of horizontal scanning lines. It's the lines of dialogue spoken by the actors.”

Bran Ferren (1953) American technologist

Museums for the New Millennium: Proceedings, museumstudies.si.edu, 2017-03-12 http://museumstudies.si.edu/millennium/proceed8.htm,

Problem

“If the West is genuinely interested in democracy then they will have to suffer hundreds of Al Jazeeras. There is Abu Dhabi television, Al-Arabiya (but that is under Saudi patronage), and there is a channel out of Lebanon (but they are politically close to Hezbollah). They are all very good as journalists but they are all part of the state.”

Samir Khader Iraqi journalist

Democracy, Suffering, Parting

“The three radios, the six cars, the four refrigerators, the seven telephones in each of the 300,000 Jewish households, and the super-television!”

Louis-ferdinand Céline (1894–1961) French writer

51
L'Ecole des cadavres (1938)

Cars

“Terrorism' is a word that has become a plague on our vocabulary, the excuse and reason and moral permit for state-sponsored violence - our violence - which is now used on the innocent of the Middle East ever more outrageously and promiscuously. Terrorism, terrorism, terrorism. It has become a full stop, a punctuation mark, a phrase, a speech, a sermon, the be-all and end-all of everything that we must hate in order to ignore injustice and occupation and murder on a mass scale. Terror, terror, terror, terror. It is a sonata, a symphony, an orchestra tuned to every television and radio station and news agency report, the soap-opera of the Devil, served up on prime-time or distilled in wearyingly dull and mendacious form by the right-wing 'commentators' of the America east coast or the Jerusalem Post or the intellectuals of Europe. Strike against Terror. Victory over Terror. War on Terror. Everlasting War on Terror. Rarely in history have soldiers and journalists and presidents and kings aligned themselves in such thoughtless, unquestioning ranks. In August 1914, the soldiers thought they would be home by Christmas. Today, we are fighting for ever. The war is eternal. The enemy is eternal, his face changing on our screens. Once he lived in Cairo and sported a moustache and nationalised the Suez Canal. Then he lived in Tripoli and wore a ridiculous military uniform and helped the IRA and bombed American bars in Berlin. Then he wore a Muslim Imam's gown and ate yoghurt in Tehran and planned Islamic revolution. Then he wore a white gown and lived in a cave in Afghanistan and then he wore another silly moustache and resided in a series of palaces around Baghdad. Terror, terror, terror. Finally, he wore a kuffiah headdress and outdated Soviet-style military fatigues, his name was Yassir Arafat, and he was the master of world terror and then a super-statesman and then again, a master of terror, linked by Israeli enemies to the terror-Meister of them all, the one who lived in the Afghan cave.”

Robert Fisk (1946) English writer and journalist

The Great War for Civilization (2005)

Hate, War, World, Home

“And the Lord Rupert looked at his work, and even he saw that it was a load of crap, but this was the enterprise culture and it sold millions so it was good. And on the same basis he decided to take over the television too, and the earth itself wept, and little robins vomited, and cuddly furry animals threw themselves under trains, and the whole thing was filmed by Sky Channel for a horror nature programme, and the most awful thing of all was that this was just the beginning.”

Attila the Stockbroker (1957) punk poet, folk punk musician and songwriter

"The Bible according to Rupert Murdoch", from attilathestockbroker.com http://www.attilathestockbroker.com. Retrieved 2007-03-26.

Nature, Animals, Training

“I'm tired of Republican-Democrat politics. I'm tired of blowhard radio people, blowhard television people, blowhard newspapers. They can take the job and shove it. I come from a blue collar background, and I am trying to do the right thing. And that's where I'm going with this.”

Roy McDonald (politician) (1947) American politician

Reported in Lucian McCarty, "Sen. Roy McDonald Comes to his decision on the same-sex marriage measure after careful consideration, remains firm in his support despite criticism", The Saratogian (June 2011).
On the subject of political parties and his blurring of the two.

People

“(Television) If women want time off to bear children, they can't expect to be treated as equals. (Sylvia) Okay, give men time off to bear children.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Variant: (Television) If women want time off to bear children, they can't expect to be treated as equals. (Sylvia) Okay, give men time off to bear children.
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 26

Women, Men, Children, Time

“Soldiers now pose, thumbs up, before the atrocities they commit, and send off the pictures to their buddies and family. What is revealed by these photographs is as much the culture of shamelessness as the reigning admiration for unapologetic brutality. Ours is a society in which secrets of private life that, formerly, you would have given nearly anything to conceal, you now clamor to get on a television show to reveal.”

Susan Sontag (1933–2004) American writer and filmmaker, professor, and activist

Regarding the Torture of Others (2004)

Life, Secret, Family

“Television is an experience that can be had by virtually everyone at the same time. By substituting for a greater diversity of experiences and unifying everyone with it, it aids commercial efficiency. With all people confined to the same mental and physical condition, a single advertising or political voice appropriate to the common mood can influence everyone.”

Jerry Mander (1936) American activist

Source: Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), p. 132

People, Mood, Time

“TV is unbalanced—if I own a TV station, and you own a television, I can speak to you, but you can’t speak to me. Phones, by contrast, are balanced; if you buy the means of consumption, you automatically own the means of production. When you purchase a phone, no one asks if you just want to listen, or if you want to talk on it too. Participation is inherent in the phone, and it’s the same for the computer. When you buy a machine that lets you consume digital content, you also buy a machine to produce it. Further, you can share material with your friends, and you can talk about what you consumed or produced or shared. These aren’t additional features; they are part of the basic package.”

Clay Shirky (1964) American technology writer

Cognitive Surplus : Creativity and Generosity in a Connected Age (2010)

Parting

“For the most part, executions happen in obscurity. If people did hear about executions, if they were publicized, even televised, I fear more would enjoy them than be repelled by them.”

Wendy Kaminer (1949) American lawyer

"6/24/95 Wendy Kaminer on Crime" (24 June 1995) http://www.aclu.org/racial-justice_prisoners-rights_drug-law-reform_immigrants-rights/62495-wendy-kaminer-crime

People, Fear, Parting

“People's memories are so short and America's propaganda is so powerful that most, even the greatest losers of this appropriation, have forgotten that a profound change occurred, which we now take for granted. We have been conditioned to react skeptically, even hostilely, to criticism of our current corporate values, values which form the foundation of everyday life today. What's more appalling is that huge numbers of those left behind in the wealth transfer genuflected to the new plutocratic class, celebrating the most vicious of the uber-CEOs. This craven CEO-worshipping is still going on today- middle Americans drag themselves home after work in order to gather around the television and watch billionaire assholes like Donald Trump deliver his "You're fired!"”

Mark Ames (1965) American writer and journalist

Part III: Ragenomics, p. 87-88
Source: Going Postal: Rage, Murder, and Rebellion, From Reagan's Workplaces to Clinton's Columbine and Beyond (2005), line to some desperate, stressed-out Smithers-abee.

Life, Hostility, People, Home

“My own home, we do it in our on home. I know about that. Anybody that has a VCR, talk to them, and I ask you to use your own commonsense… If you had the power to sit on a playback of a recording and you could wipe out the commercials or not wipe out the commercials, what would you do? … We all do it.
But when you do it, you strip away the reason for free television. … As far as I am concerned, I am going to continue taping because the plaintiffs have said they aren't going to do anything to me. I am not committing any crime. They know that.”

Jack Valenti (1921–2007) President of the MPAA

Testimony to the US House of Representatives (1982)

Home

“Never pass up a chance to have sex or appear on television.”

Gore Vidal (1925–2012) American writer

Quoted by Bob Chieger, Was It Good For You, Too? (1983).
1980s

Sex, Appearance, Chance

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.”

Joe Biden (1942) 47th Vice President of the United States (in office from 2009 to 2017)

Interview with CBS Evening News. CBS Evening News http://cbs2.com/politics/joe.biden.interview.2.823202.html, September 22, 2008 2000s

“My little China Girl
You shouldn't mess with me.
I'll ruin everything you are.
I'll give you television.
I'll give you eyes of blue.
I'll give you a man who wants to rule the world.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

China Girl, written with Iggy Pop — Video at YouTube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5A34kCOtegQ Song lyrics, Let's Dance (1983)

World, Girl

“Why then are the arts and sciences important? I suppose with the sciences we could say that the answer is obvious: we have radium, penicillin, television and recorded sound, motor-cars and aircraft, air-conditioning and central heating. But these achievements have never been the primary intention of science; they are a sort of by-product, the things that emerge only when the scientist has performed his main task. That task is simply stated: to be curious, to keep on asking the question 'Why?' and not to be satisfied till an answer has been found. The scientist is curious about the universe: he wants to know why water boils at one temperature and freezes at another; why cheese is different from chalk; why one person behaves differently from another. Not only 'Why?' but ‘What?' What is salt made of? What are the stars? What is the constitution of all matter? The answers to these questions do not necessarily malke our lives any easier. The answer to one question—'Can the atom be split?' - has made our lives somewhat harder. But the questions have to be asked. It is man's job to be curious; it is man's job to try to find out the truth about the world about us, to answer the big question 'What is the world really like?”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Non-Fiction, English Literature: A Survey for Students (1958, revised 1974)

Truth, World, Art, Cars

“I said you know what, I thought my transformation was that I needed to transform into Erika Jayne, but my true transformation took place when Erika Jayne showed me that Erika Girardi was just fine the whole time. It was just a truer, shinier version of myself. And you can be fluent in both of your personas, both your personalities. We all have them, whether you’re on a reality television show or not, whether you’re 47 years old and you’re out there singing and dancing. You’re not the same person at home as you are at work, or with other people, so there are performance personas whether you acknowledge them or not. And transformation is individual. This is my story, my experiences, doing this stuff. Maybe yours is something different, but they’re equally important.”

Erika Jayne (1969) American singer, actress and television personality

Erika Jayne interview to Detroit News https://eu.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/music/2018/10/23/tv-bravo-real-housewives-beverly-hills-erika-jayne-singer-billboard-chart-club-music/38252769/ (2018)

People, Home, Reality, Singing

“Humans are very good at dreaming, although you’d never know it from your television.”

Carl Sagan book Contact

Source: Contact (1985), Chapter 20 (p. 359)

Dreams

“As I watch television films on my own set I am continually aware that I do not have a complete control of the end results. For there is an engineer in every television station control booth who can change the screen image according to his instructions and depending upon the condition of his equipment. And there are the TV viewers who are their own "engineers." I believe that the time is not too distant when the only engineers will be the technicians who actually create the film that is transmitted. Only when that day arrives will we really have film quality comparable to motion picture standards as we know them today.”

Karl Freund (1890–1969) German film director and cinematographer

Filming The Lucy Show (December 1953)

Distant, Change, Time, Dependency

“The President of the United States openly betrayed his country on the world stage. We can argue why he did it – whether it was a mistake in judgment, a failure to lead or simply deference to a man who might very well be his handler. We cannot know why Mr. Trump did what he did in Helsinki, why he aided and abetted our most dangerous foreign adversary. But we watched a high crime play out on national television. We saw a president disqualify himself from office. And if he hasn’t resigned his position by the afternoon or offered an explanation while begging forgiveness, he should be removed for the good of the country.”

Jared Yates Sexton (1981)

About the 2018 Russia–United States summit, That was treason, Donald Trump. We all saw it https://www.theglobeandmail.com/opinion/article-that-was-treason-donald-trump-we-all-saw-it/ (July 16, 2018), The Globe and Mail.

World, Failure, Forgiveness, Country

“I watched when the World Trade Center came tumbling down. And I watched in Jersey City, N. J., where thousands and thousands of people were cheering as that building was coming down. Thousands of people were cheering.
It was on television. I saw it. It was well covered at the time, George. Now, I know they don't like to talk about it, but it was well covered at the time. There were people over in New Jersey that were watching it, a heavy Arab population, that were cheering as the buildings came down. Not good.”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

21 November 2015 speech in Birmingham Alabama, then next-day reply to George Stephanopoulos, according to 22 November 2015 PolitiFact article https://www.politifact.com/truth-o-meter/statements/2015/nov/22/donald-trump/fact-checking-trumps-claim-thousands-new-jersey-ch/ 2010s, 2015

People, World, Time

“Katie commented that Americans had lost the ability to enjoy themselves.
“We watch television,” Dave said.”

Jack McDevitt book Time Travelers Never Die

Source: Time Travelers Never Die (2009), Chapter 44 (p. 378)

“Television is of great educational value. It teaches you while still young how to (a) kill, (b) rob, (c) embezzle, (d) shoot, (e) poison, and, generally speaking, (f) how to grow up into a Wild West outlaw or gangster by the time you leave school.”

George Mikes (1912–1987) Hungarian-born British author

How to Be an Alien: A Handbook for Beginners and More Advanced Pupils (1946)

Education, School, Time

“I do not know of anything in modern poetry as violently hostile to contemporary life as was the poetry of T. S. Eliot, which so perfectly fitted the mood of the young people between the two wars. I also find much more benevolence towards humanity in younger historians than there was in Spengler or in Toynbee. Still, it is not difficult to sense the disgust of the intellectuals at the new prosperous working class, 'with their eyes glued to the television screen,' who have become indifferent to radical ideas.”

Dennis Gabor (1900–1979) Nobel Prize-winning physicist and inventor of holography

Source: Inventing the Future (1963), p. 18

Life, Hostility, War, People

“Not too many years ago a television ad depicted a service station attended selling oil filters. His pitch was, "you can pay me now or you can pay me later." The difference was an eight dollar oil filter or a new engine.”

Wheeler L. Baker (1938) President of Hargrave Military Academy

Source: Crisis Management: A Model For Managers (1993), p. 19

“In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point.”

Marshall McLuhan (1911–1980) Canadian educator, philosopher, and scholar-- a professor of English literature, a literary critic, and a …

Variant: In television, images are projected at you. You are the screen. The images wrap around you. You are the vanishing point. (p. 125)
Source: 1960s, The Medium is the Message (1967), p. 125

“(Man on television) Man is the hunter. Woman is the civilizing influence, and when women abandon that role, men become (Sylvia) Cranky, and start wars.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p.169

Women, Men, War

“Whether or not you love television, you've got to admit that it certainly loves itself.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Love

“(Television announcer) The Supreme Court staggered the nation today when they ruled that conception begins the minute you think about sex.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Variant: (Television announcer) The Supreme Court staggered the nation today when they ruled that conception begins the minute you think about sex. (pp. 60-61)
Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, pp. 60-61

Sex, Thinking

“The acting was always disappointing. Silly stories about nonsense people. I felt really cheated by acting, because I've never really felt anything from it. I don't wanna be the women on television, who are always nice and do the right thing. I want to be the woman who makes mistakes and gets away with it. The Night Porter is my favourite film. Charlotte Rampling is boiling with rage and going, "I can do it worse. I'm badder, and dirtier than you will ever be, and you'll never break me."”

Sienna Guillory (1975) British actress

And I just love that. FILM: Beauty and the Beasts Article http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4158/is_20040312/ai_n12769890/pg_1. The London Independent. March 12, 2004.

Love, Women, People, Disappointment

“Bullying behaviour can be communicated via text, mobile phones, internet, social networking sites, forums. But we can't limit it because these messages are then reinforced by television which glamorises yelling, swearing and vulgar behaviour as the way to walk the red carpet of acceptance.”

Louise Burfitt-Dons (1953) Activist, writer, blogger

Speech, Tackling Bullying Conference, London (2008-02-27)

Way, Communication

“Our enemies are getting stronger and stronger by the way, and we as a country are getting weaker. Even our nuclear arsenal doesn't work. It came out recently they have equipment that is 30 years old. They don't know if it worked. And I thought it was horrible when it was broadcast on television, because boy, does that send signals to Putin and all of the other people that look at us and they say, "That is a group of people, and that is a nation that truly has no clue. They don't know what they're doing. They don't know what they're doing."”

Donald J. Trump (1946) 45th President of the United States of America

2010s, 2015, Presidential Bid Announcement (June 16, 2015)

People, Way, Boy, Country

“No matter how hard you climb, there are always the rich above you, who got there without effort. Lucky stiffs, holding you down, making you discontent so you buy more of the crap advertised on television.”

John Updike book Rabbit at Rest

Rabbit at Rest (1990)

Effort

“In the world of television, the massive flows of information are largely in only one direction, which makes it virtually impossible for individuals to take part in what passes for a national conversation. Individuals receive, but they cannot send. They hear, but they do not speak. The "well-informed citizenry" is in danger of becoming the "well-amused audience."”

Al Gore (1948) 45th Vice President of the United States

Quotes, The Assault on Reason (2007)

World, Parting

“I found America the friendliest, most forgiving, and most generous nation I had ever visited. We South Americans tend to think of things in terms of convenience, whereas people in the United States approach things ethically. This — amateur Protestant that I am — I admired above all. It even helped me overlook skyscrapers, paper bags, television, plastics, and the unholy jungle of gadgets.”

Jorge Luis Borges (1899–1986) Argentine short-story writer, essayist, poet and translator, and a key figure in Spanish language literature

Autobiographical Notes (1970)

People, Forgiveness, Thinking, Help

“Film is more appealing in a lot of ways, especially with the relationship with the audience. They’ve paid to come and see it, they’re more prepared to see characters develop. With television, there’s a different criteria. You still want to have all the qualities of film but there are things you have to work against. It’s much quicker, it has to be more dynamic in maintaining an audience’s interest.”

John Hannah (actor) (1962) Scottish actor

The Inspector's Call http://www.johnhannah.net/interview00.php#tic (April 17, 2000)

Way

“It’s important to understand how we got where we are today. In 1966, the unthinkable happened: a madman climbed the University of Texas clock tower and opened fire, killing more than a dozen people. It was the first mass shooting in the age of television, and it left a real impression on the country. It was the kind of terror we didn’t expect to ever see again. But around 30 years ago, we started to see an uptick in these types of shootings, and over the last decade they’ve become the new norm.
In July 2012, a gunman walked into a darkened theater in Aurora and shot 12 people to death, injuring 70 more. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. The sudden and utterly random violence was a terrifying sign of what was to come.
In December 2012, a young man entered an elementary school in Newtown and murdered six educators and 20 young children. One of his weapons was an assault rifle. Watching the aftermath of these young babies being gunned down was heartrending.
In June 2016, a gunman entered a nightclub in Orlando and sprayed revelers with gunfire. The shooter fired hundreds of rounds, many in close proximity, and killed 49. Many of the victims were shot in the head at close range. One of his weapons was an assault rifle.
Last month, a gunman opened fire on concertgoers in Las Vegas, turning an evening of music into a killing field. All told, the shooter used multiple assault rifles fitted with bump-fire stocks to kill 58 people. The concert venue looked like a warzone.
Over the weekend in Sutherland Springs, 26 were killed by a gunman with an assault rifle. The dead ranged from 17 months old to 77 years. No one is spared with these weapons of war. When so many rounds are fired so quickly, no one is spared. Another community devastated and dozens of families left to pick up the pieces.
These are just a few of the many communities we talk about in hushed tones—San Bernardino, Littleton, Aurora, towns and cities across the country that have been permanently scarred.”

Dianne Feinstein (1933) American politician

[Senators Introduce Assault Weapons Ban, November 8, 2017, w:Diane Feinstein, Diane, Feinstein, https://www.feinstein.senate.gov/public/index.cfm/2017/11/senators-introduce-assault-weapons-ban]
On the introduction of the Assault Weapons Ban of 2017

Death, War, Children, People

“In 1885 we invented music television. We just didn't bother telling anybody.”

Patrick Allen (1927–2006) Film, television and voice actor

E4, E4 Music Trails

Music

“Appearing on the 700 Club on television, he incorrectly said, "The Democratic Party platform from 2004 says marriage is between a man and a woman." [32] Dean later apologized for misstating the party's official position: "The Democratic Party remains committed to equal protection under the law for all Americans. How we achieve that goal continues to be the subject of a contentious debate, but our Party continues to oppose constitutional amendments that seek to short circuit the debate on how to achieve equality for all Americans."”

Howard Dean (1948) American political activist

Marriage, Law, Appearance

“The technological landscape of the present day has enfranchised its own electorates — the inhabitants of the marketing zones in the consumer society, television audiences and news magazine readerships, who vote with money at the cash counter rather than with ballot paper at the polling boot. These huge and passive electorates are wide open to any opportunist using the psychological weaponry of fear and anxiety, elements that are carefully blanched out of the world of domestic products and consumer software.”

J. G. Ballard (1930–2009) British writer

"The Consumer Consumed", originally published in Ink (1971)
A User's Guide to the Millennium (1996)

Money, World, Fear

“It saddens me that the game has sold its soul to television. What we see now is a televisual game, and it cannot bear the weight of its publicity.”

Stuart Hall (1929–2014) sociologist and cultural theorist

Telegraph.co.uk http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/football/2317798/Stuart-Hall-enjoying-time-of-his-life.html (28 July 2007).

Soul, Game

“The paralysis you feel right now – the impotent helplessness that washes over you as news of another mass slaughter scrolls across the television screen – isn’t real. It's a fiction created and methodically cultivated by the gun lobby, designed to assure that no laws are passed to make America safer, because those laws would cut into their profits…As my colleagues go to sleep tonight, they need to think about whether the political support of the gun industry is worth the blood that flows endlessly onto the floors of American churches, elementary schools, movie theaters, and city streets. Ask yourself – how can you claim that you respect human life while choosing fealty to weapons-makers over support for measures favored by the vast majority of your constituents?”

Chris Murphy (1973) American politician

Statement on the shootings in Sutherland Springs, TX http://www.businessinsider.com/chris-murphy-texas-church-shooting-sutherland-springs-2017-11 (November 5, 2017)

Life, School, Law, Feeling

“(Voice on television) Mom, can a douche make you feel more confident? (Sylvia) Not like a good stock portfolio.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 77

Feeling, Confidence, Moms

“We are currently wealthy, fat, comfortable and complacent. We have currently a built-in allergy to unpleasant or disturbing information. Our mass media reflect this. But unless we get up off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse and insulate us, then television and those who finance it, those who look at it and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

“Ninety-nine percent of what you read about investing in magazines and newspapers, and 100% of what you hear on television is worse than useless.”

William J. Bernstein (1948) economist

Source: The Four Pillars of Investing (2002), Chapter 15, A Final Word, p. 297.

Reading

“They say the church spire interferes with their bloody television reception.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

“Things would have worked out a lot better if we had bought our first television set a year earlier, in 1950, so that I could have watched DiMaggio while he was still great. Then I could have shared with my father and other people the vision of the eternal baseball star. It might even have helped me to have more appreciation for some of my elders in the economics profession. But maybe I should be worrying instead about what the young hot shots in economics are thinking of me.”

Robert Barro (1944) American classical macroeconomist

Source: Nothing Is Sacred (2002), p. 65

People, Star, Thinking, Help

“(Television) The brain is differently wired in men and women. (Sylvia) In men, the wires are loose.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 26

Women, Men

“It was apparent… that, all over America, thousands of people threw down a book or got up from a television show and said, 'I can write better than that!' It was amazing how many of them were wrong.”

Donald E. Westlake (1933–2008) American novelist

Dancing Aztecs (1976)

People, Books

“What the immigrant cannot help noticing is that America is a country where the poor live comparatively well. This fact was dramatized in the 1980s, when CBS television broadcast an anti-Reagan documentary, "People Like Us", which was intended to show the miseries of the poor during an American recession. The Soviet Union also broadcast the documentary, with a view to embarrassing the Reagan administration. But by the testimony of former Soviet leaders, it had the opposite effect. Ordinary people across the Soviet Union saw that the poorest Americans have television sets and microwave ovens and cars. They arrived at the same perception of America that I witnessed in a friend of mine from Bombay who has been unsuccessfully trying to move to the United States for nearly a decade. Finally I asked him, "Why are you so eager to come to America?"”

Dinesh D'Souza (1961) Indian-American political commentator, filmmaker, author

He replied, "Because I really want to live in a country where the poor people are fat."
Source: Books, What's So Great About America (2003), Ch. 3: Becoming American

People, Cars, Help, Country

“I notice from the papers and on television today that the Tories have now brought in a new person to get people to vote Tory, and I could not help noticing that the person is named, as I saw on the website, "Mr. Tosser". I do not know which person on the Front Bench this man is modelled on, but let me tell the right hon. Gentleman that I always thought that his party was full of them, and that is why they have lost three elections.”

John Prescott (1938) Deputy Prime Minister of the United Kingdom (1997–2007)

Statement in the House of Commons (29 November 2006)

People, Help, Personality

“Soon it will be achieved. The lie of television has been that there are contexts to which television will grant an access. Since lies last, usually, no more than one generation, television will re-form around the idea that television itself is a context to which television will grant an access.”

George W. S. Trow (1943–2006) American writer

Within the Context of No Context (1980)

Lie, Idea

“Everything is being televised so you won't be able to tell where the Revolution is. "Who's revolting? Well, I don't know, what's on the other channel?"”

Maria Bamford (1970) American actress and comedian

Nerdist podcast, episode #25 http://www.nerdist.com/2010/07/nerdist-podcast-25-maria-bamford/, July 5, 2012 Other

““Sharpie, you’ve got a one-track mind.”
“It’s the main track. Reproduction is the main track; the methods and mores of sexual copulation are the central feature of all higher developments of life.”
“You’re ignoring money and television.”
“Piffle! All human activities including scientific research are either mating dances and care of the young, or the dismal sublimations of born losers in the only game in town.””

Robert A. Heinlein book The Number of the Beast

Source: The Number of the Beast (1980), Chapter XI : “—citizens must protect themselves.”, p. 100

Life, Money, Game, Dance

“Yes, but there is the problem. It would have been banal. Mediocre. We had been trained to despise everything which was not excellent. How disgusting to see the father of one of our classmates or friends on vacation playing cards or, even worse, siting on the sofa watching television. We blush with shame for our unfortunate little friend.”

André Weil (1906–1998) French mathematician

From At home with André and Simone Weil by Sylvie Weil, p. 30 https://books.google.com/books?id=OdeDlT9-GBUC&pg=PA30 Quote About

Problem, Training

“The word, although prevalent in our day, has lost its reasoning value, and has value only as an accessory to images. In turn, the word actually evokes images. But it does not evoke the direct images related to my personal experience. Rather, it calls up images from the newspaper or television. The key words in our modern vocabulary, thanks to propaganda and advertising, are words that relate to visual reproduction. They are stripped of all rational content, so they evoke only visions that whisk us away to some enchanted universe. Saying "fascism," "progress," "science," or "justice" does not suggest any idea or produce any reflection. It only causes a fanfare of images to explode within us: a sort of fireworks of visual commonplaces, which link up very precisely with each other. These related images provide me with practical content: a common truth that is especially easy to swallow because the ready-made images that showed it to me had been digested in advance. Make no mistake here: this is how modern people usually think. We are arriving at a purely emotional stage of thinking.”

Jacques Ellul (1912–1994) French sociologist, technology critic, and Christian anarchist

J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 210
The Humiliation of the Word (1981)

People, Truth, Justice, Idea

“(Without the CPF), Singaporeans would buy enormous quantities of clothes, shoes, furniture, television sets, radio, tape recorders, hi-fis, washing machines, motor cars. They would have no substantial or permanent asset to show for it.”

Lee Kuan Yew (1923–2015) First Prime Minister of Singapore

Asian Wall Street Journal, Oct 21 1985
1980s

Cars, Shoe, Clothes

“Borrowing to build factories is not the economic equivalent of borrowing to buy television sets, and it’s amazing just how few modern economists can see the difference…Borrowing to produce is the way poor countries become rich. Borrowing to consume is the way rich countries become poor. A vivid example of the latter is the stream of container ships unloading at U. S. ports and going back empty because we have nothing to ship.”

Peter D. Schiff (1963) American entrepreneur, economist and author

Quotes from Crash Proof (2006)

Way, Country

“Japan is very much a TV-centred entertainment industry. So when you talk about big stars in Japan, generally they are people who are on television. I work mostly in movies.”

Chiaki Kuriyama (1984) Japanese actress and singer

Singapore Press' New Paper (29 October 2003)

People, Star

“We need imagination in programming, not sterility; creativity, not imitation; experimentation, not conformity; excellence, not mediocrity. Television is filled with creative, imaginative people. You must strive to set them free.”

Newton N. Minow (1926) United States attorney and former chairman of the Federal Communications Commission

Speech to the National Association of Broadcasters, May 9, 1961 (the Wasteland Speech)

People, Imagination

“Viewers of television, for instance, aren't aware of their own physical vulnerabilities. They get used, manipulated by images of depersonalized sex.”

Vanna Bonta book Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel

Source: Flight: A Quantum Fiction Novel (1995), Ch. 32

Sex

“If you switch on television it's just ridiculous and its destructive. It kills us. And talk shows will kill us. They kill our language. So we have to declare holy war against what we see every single day on television. Commercials and — I think there should be real war against commercials, real war against talk shows, real war against "Bonanza" and "Rawhide", or all these things.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Werner Herzog Eats His Shoe (1980)

War, Thinking

“I do quite like hairy things. That probably came out of my growing up in front of the television as a kid in the 50s. I saw a lot of the classic Universal films, and was really attracted to the Wolf Man - I thought that was such a cool idea. And, you know, Mr Hyde. So many things I like had hair on. So I started making hairy things and never stopped, you know?”

Rick Baker (1950) American special makeup effects artist

Rick Baker interview: Men In Black 3, werewolves and Videodrome http://www.denofgeek.com/movies/23258/rick-baker-interview-men-in-black-3-werewolves-and-videodrome (November 5, 2012)

Idea, Universe, Wolf

“I think television's become a downright dangerous thing. It has no moral barometer whatsoever. If you want to talk about something that is all about money, just watch the television. It's damn dangerous. TV does not care about you or what happens to you. It's downright bad for your health now, and that's not a far-out concept. I think watching the TV news is bad for you. It is bad for your physical health and your mental health. The music business looks like, you know, innocent schoolboys compared to the TV business. They care about nothing but profit.”

Tom Petty (1950–2017) American musician

Rolling Stone interview (2002)

Money, Health, Music, Business

“I used to be a lot more critical of Israel, and I used to believe there was a fairly simple two-state solution, because I used to believe the Arabs were acting in good faith. I still want to believe that, but the evidence tells me I'd be a fool to believe it, because I've seen that every concession Israel makes is met with more demands and more excuses not to negotiate. They could have had peace ten times over if they wanted it, but they don't want peace, they want victory, and they won't be happy until Israel is wiped from the map. A member of Fatah central committee said as much on television recently, but as he said, they keep that to themselves, and tell the rest of the world a different story.”

Pat Condell (1949) Stand-up comedian, writer, and Internet personality

"The great Palestinian lie" (6 October 2011) http://youtube.com/watch?v=j1N1zhUm84w, responding to a statement http://www.memri.org/clip/en/0/0/0/0/0/0/3130.htm by Abbas Zaki. 2011

World, Peace, Faith, Fools

“Yo, I heard it's said the revolution won't be televised
But in the land of milk and honey there's a date you gotta sell it by
Otherwise it just expires and spoils
and these folks jump out the pot when the water too hot”

Talib Kweli (1975) American rapper

Beautiful Struggle (track 13)
Albums, The Beautiful Struggle (2004)

Water

“So I think we need a new plan. Next time a country wants to take us on, 'stead of sending bombs, let's try this: send everyone in the country a color television and a satellite dish. And give 'em the basic package, not HBO — screw those people. And before the war starts, we make them all sit down. "Okay, we'll go to war with you. You want a piece of us, fine, fine. Before we go, I want you guys to understand us a little better, so you have to sit down and watch ESPN2 for 24 hours. 'Cause you watch ESPN2 for a full day, you're gonna understand America a lot better. 'Hi, we're America! We build monster trucks for fun! We developed the top fuel dragster, zero to three hundred thirty miles an hour in under five seconds, cause, pfft, we were bored. Piss us off, heh, and see what we build! And we may feel bad about it later! Ask Japan. But before we feel bad…we're gonna jack you up! And then we're gonna send you FOOD! 'Cause we're America; we're schizophrenic. Don't mess with a nation that needs medication!'"”

Christopher Titus (1964) actor, writer, podcaster

The Fifth-Annual End-of-the-World Tour (2007)

War, People, Food, Color

“I found myself at the top of the the ladder, with everything, but with one thing missing: that one thing was a companion. Because, it's cliché to say, but nothing really means anything in the end unless you're really doing what you want to do, and… I walked off a huge world tour, with a yacht and television specials, and record deals, and film deals. I walked away and my whole thing collapsed. I shocked my business world and walked back to my cottage, which I had been renting to two American girls. One of them was Cynthia, and I stayed with her for two days, then her friend Lori came back from Clapton's house, where there had been a party going on for almost a week. Lori came in with another friend, and it was Linda, my Sunshine Supergirl from 1965 whom I'd written all my songs for. We hadn't married then, because she had a child with Brian Jones and wasn't ready for another relationship. And it was good that we didn't marry back then, because my four years of '60's fame would have wrecked the marriage. But we met again, and I went away from fame and into the arms of my muse, my lover, and then my wife, and then the mother of my children.”

Donovan (1946) Scottish singer, songwriter and guitarist

Grip interview (1997)

Marriage, Children, World, Girl

“Our meeting with Admiral Leighton Smith, on the other hand, did not go well. He had been in charge of the NATO air strikes in August and September [1995], and this gave him enormous credibility, especially with the Bosnian Serbs. Smith was also the beneficiary of a skillful public relations effort that cast him as the savior of Bosnia. In a long profile, Newsweek had called him "a complex warrior and civilizer, a latter-day George C. Marshall." This was quite a journalistic stretch, given the fact that Smith considered the civilian aspects of the task beneath him and not his job - quite the opposite of what General Marshall stood for.
After a distinguished thirty-three-year Navy career, including almost three hundred combat missions in Vietnam, Smith was well qualified for his original post as commander of NATO's southern forces and Commander in Chief of all U. S. naval forces in Europe. But he was the wrong man for his additional assignment as IFOR commander, which was the result of two bureaucratic compromises, one with the French, the other with the American military. General Joulwan rightly wanted the sixty thousand IFOR soldiers to have as their commanding officer an Army general trained in the use of ground forces. But Paris insisted that if Joulwan named a separate Bosnia commander, it would have to be a Frenchman. This was politically impossible for the United States; thus, the Franh objections left only one way to preserve an American chain of command - to give the job to Admiral Smith, who joked that he was now known as "General" Smith. (…)
On the military goals of Dayton, he was fine; his plans for separating the forces along the line we had drawn in Dayton and protecting his forces were first-rate. But he was hostile to any suggestions that IFOR help implement any nonmilitary portion of the agreement. This, he said repeatedly, was not his job.
Based on Shalikashvili's statement at White House meetings, Christopher and I had assumed that the IFOR commander would use his authority to do substancially more than he was obligated to do. The meeting with Smith shattered that hope. Smith and his British deputy, General Michael Walker, made clear that they intended to take a minimalist approach to all aspects of implementation other than force protection. Smith signaled this in his first extensive public statement to the Bosnian people, during a live call-in program on Pale Television - an odd choice for his first local media appearance. During the program, he answered a question in a manner that dangerously narrowed his own authority. He later told Newsweek about it with a curious pride: "One of the questions I was asked was, "Admiral, is it true that IFOR is going to arrest Serbs in the Serb suburbs of Sarajevo?" I said, "Absolutely not, I don't have the authority to arrest anybody"."”

Richard Holbrooke (1941–2010) American diplomat

This was an inaccurate way to describe IFOR's mandate. It was true IFOR was not supposed to make routine arrests of ordinary citizens. But IFOR had the authority to arrest indicted war criminals, and could also detain anyone who posed a threat to its forces. Knowing what the question meant, Smith had sent an unfortunate signal of reassurance to Karadzic - over his own network.
Source: 1990s, To End a War (1998), p.327-329

Hostility, War, People, Hope

“If I did become Minister of Nudism, I'd be allowed to be on television every evening around nine thirty. I'd come on and say "Good evening. This is the Minister of Nudism. Take off your clothes and begin to dance about."”

Peter Cook (1937–1995) British architect

"Peace Through Nudism" (1964)
E. L. Wisty

Dance, Clothes

“I hope through The L Word to become an honorary member of the gay tribe. I cherish the thought that some young girl or woman somewhere may one night turn on the television and for the first time ever see her life represented -- not as an isolated incident but as a multiplicity. Her overwhelming fear may have been that she might never find her tribe, she might never find love and now she knows that they are both out there waiting for her.”

Jennifer Beals (1963) American actress and a former teen model

Speech at L.A. Gay & Lesbian Center Women's Night (17 April 2004) http://www.jennifer-beals.com/media/speeches/womensnight2004.html.

Love, Life, Fear, Hope

“And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction
Essays

People, Way

“I got a phone call from Ricky Martin's management asking me if I'd like to do something with him in Florida around the winter music conference. My answer is as follows: 'I would consider doing something with Ricky Martin if and only if he publicly apologizes for performing at George W's inauguration and if he confirms that when he danced next to George W. Bush at the inauguration he could smell brimstone and that George W. Bush is in fact the spawn of Satan. So if Ricky Martin goes on national television to confirm that George W. is the spawn of Satan then I will perform with him. Otherwise no deal. And only if we can do a cover of 'In a Gadda-da-vida', but The Simpsons version, 'In the garden of Eden' (to which reverend Lovejoy responds ""that sounds like rock and or roll""). And, by the way, I'm a pretty easygoing young-ish person, so if you ever see me walking down the street just stop me and say hello. We're all in the same boat, right? of course you'll have to make it past my phalanx of security guards who are all ex-NFL linebackers, and the cadre of dobermans, and the perma-moat that I wear that's filled with electric eels and vicious sea monkeys. So if you see me just come and say hi. I'm normal.”

Moby (1965) Activist, American musician, DJ and photographer

"predictions" http://www.moby.com/journal/2001-02-15/predictions.html, journal entry (15 February 2001) at Moby's website, moby.com http://www.moby.com/

Music, Way, Winter, Past

“All this probing and grappling we must do, out in society: how much easier, Annabelle thinks, it is to stay in rooms you know as well as your own body, having a warm meal and an evening of television, where it's all so comfortably one-way.”

John Updike book Rabbit Remembered

Rabbit Remembered (2000)

Way, Thinking

“When television screens had only rare images of black folks, black people were more critically vigilant about these representations. Even when blackness was represented 'positiviely,' as it was in early black television shows like Julia, which focused on the life of a black nurse, the beauty standard was a reflection of white supremacist aesthetics.”

Bell Hooks (1952) American author, feminist, and social activist

Rock My Soul (2003)

Life, People, Beauty

“By the time they first encounter porn, most men have internalized the sexist ideology of our culture, and porn, rather than being an aberration, actually cements and consolidates their ideas about sexuality. And it does this in a way that gives them intense sexual pleasure. This framing of sexist ideology as sexy and hot gives porn a pass to deliver messages about women that in any other form would be seen as completely unacceptable. Imagine what would happen if suddenly we saw a slew of dramas and sitcoms on television where, say, blacks or Jews were repeatedly referred to in a racist or anti-Semitic way, where they got their hair pulled, faces slapped, and choked by white men pushing foreign objects into their mouths. My guess is that there would be an outcry and the images would not be defended on the grounds that they were just fantasy but rather would be seen for what they are: depictions of cruel acts that one group is perpetrating against another group. By wrapping the violence in a sexual cloak, porn renders it invisible, and those of us who protest the violence are consequently defined as anti-sex, not anti-violence.”

Gail Dines (1958) anti-pornography campaigner

Pornland: How Porn Hijacked Our Sexuality, Gail Dines

Women, Men, Pleasure, Sex

“All floated upon an evening carrousel, with fitful drifts of music wafting up here and there, and voices calling and murmuring from houses that were whitely haunted by television.”

Ray Bradbury book The Golden Apples of the Sun

The Wilderness (1952)
The Golden Apples of the Sun (1953)

Music, Housing

“Back then "cruel and unusual punishment" meant the rack and burning at the stake — both of those things that had been used in pre-Revolutionary America — but in more recent rulings it has been taken to mean the absence of cable television and denial of sex-change operations, or just overcrowding in the prisons.”

Tom Clancy book Executive Orders

Executive Orders (1996), p. 613
1990s

Sex, Change

“The Hunger Games is a reality television program. An extreme one, but that's what it is. And while I think some of those shows can succeed on different levels, there's also the voyeuristic thrill, watching people being humiliated or brought to tears or suffering physically. And that's what I find very disturbing. There's this potential for desensitizing the audience so that when they see real tragedy playing out on the news, it doesn't have the impact it should. It all just blurs into one program. And I think it's very important not just for young people, but for adults to make sure they're making the distinction. Because the young soldier's dying in the war in Iraq, it's not going to end at the commercial break. It's not something fabricated, it's not a game. It's your life.”

Suzanne Collins (1962) American television writer and novelist

Q&A with Hunger Games Author Suzanne Collins, July 31, 2013, Hannah Trierweiler Hudson, Scholastic.com http://www.scholastic.com/teachers/article/qa-hunger-games-author-suzanne-collins,

Life, Hunger, War, People