Quotes about television
page 5

“A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station, not the factory. It concentrates its energy on infiltrating and changing the image system.”

Abbie Hoffman (1936–1989) American political and social activist

Source: Soon to be a Major Motion Picture (1980), p. 86

Change

“I later saw Afande Tugume on television saying funny things. I don't know whether it was his accent or he meant it but instead of saying: "The match was unfair!", he said: "The match was an affair!". Now my girlfriend wants to call off our kwanjula because of his statements on national television.”

Moses Golola (1980) Kick Boxer, Eating Champion

After knocking out Titus Tugume http://www.observer.ug/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=27455:golola-moses-of-uganda-replies-pablo&catid=47:pablo-humour in 10 seconds at Freedom City on Entebbe Road (August 2013)

“I would love to talk to you about that, Josh, but there's something else I want to bring up, and that's this. (Holds up a screenplay entitled "Live For The Moment: The Jeff Hardy Story") I had a friend in a fancy Hollywood agency the other day, and he ran across this little gem. Somebody actually took the time to write a screenplay about the Jeff Hardy story. So I was paging through it, and lo and behold, it culminates, of course, with Jeff conquering his demons and beating me her tonight in a TLC match at SummerSlam. What a great feelgood story, Josh, all except, of course, for the ending, which is not reality-based. It's fake, it's phony, just like everybody who lives in this town. I'd go as far as to say that I'm the only real person in this building right now. I wish I could say it's a Los Angeles epidemic, but the fact is it's worldwide. You have people that falsely idolize what they see in movies and on television; you have housewives in Iowa that subscribe to U. S. Weekly, US Weekly, or whatever it's called, so they can model their hair after Kate Gosselin, instead of helping their own children with their homework; you have little kids all over the world, millions of them, who idolize the "hip, cool star", and it doesn't matter if that hip cool star is some dork vampire in Twilight, or if it's Jeff Hardy. It doesn't matter if that hip cool star has a reprehensible, reckless lifestyle. You know, it doesn't matter if the collective intelligence of this entire country continues to spiral downward, day in and day out. It doesn't matter as long as it's cool, right? You know why they don't make movies about a guy like me? It's cause I don't support your poisoned society. I don't support this den of iniquity known as Hollywood. No, instead, I'm dismissed as being preachy, except I'm not preachy—I never have been. I just tell the truth. You know, I'm not a screenwriter either, but tonight I think I'll take a stab at it. Tonight I'm gonna rewrite the ending of "The Jeff Hardy Story."”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

It's gonna be horrifying. It's gonna be very, very graphic. It might be hard to watch for a lot of people, but it will have a happy ending: new World Heavyweight Champion—CM Punk.
At SummerSlam
Friday Night SmackDown

Love, Children, People, Truth

“Some people in our country seem more concerned about respecting the dignity and privacy of criminals and terrorists than they are about having an airport full of people obliterated, or a completely booked hotel blown to bits. Perhaps they think, Let's not get so upset about attacks on our embassies or military bases. Maybe, they surmise, the terrorists have good reason for attacking us. We have no right to be harassing innocent people in our country. For some people, not even the grotesque images that filled our television screens after al Qaeda's blatant attacks on 9/11 seem enough to wake them out of their utopia feel-good world.”

John Ashcroft (1942) American politician

Source: Never Again: Securing America and Restoring Justice (2006), p. 259

People, Books, World, Feeling

“(Television) Angry women beat up shoe salesman who posed as gynecologist. (Sylvia) I hate guys who do that.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 31

Women, Hate, Shoe, Guy

“Computing spread out much, much faster than educating unsophisticated people can happen. In the last 25 years or so, we actually got something like a pop culture, similar to what happened when television came on the scene and some of its inventors thought it would be a way of getting Shakespeare to the masses. But they forgot that you have to be more sophisticated and have more perspective to understand Shakespeare. What television was able to do was to capture people as they were. So I think the lack of a real computer science today, and the lack of real software engineering today, is partly due to this pop culture.”

Alan Kay (1940) computer scientist

ACM Queue A Conversation with Alan Kay Vol. 2, No. 9 - Dec/Jan 2004-2005 http://queue.acm.org/detail.cfm?id=1039523 2000s, A Conversation with Alan Kay, 2004–05

People, Education, Way, Understanding

“The physical lot of surviving workers had notably improved, with unemployment insurance, social security, and the new health services, while their children's school education was assured by the government-operated schools: in addition, they had, for intellectual or emotional stimulus and diversion, the radio and the television. But the work itself was no longer as various, as interesting, or as sustaining to the personality…”

Lewis Mumford book The Myth of the Machine

Technical Liberation
The Myth of the Machine (1967-1970), The Pentagon of Power (1970)

Children, Health, Education, School

“(Television) Our station is experiencing technical difficulties, so please try and amuse yourselves in whatever way you did before you became so emotionally dependent on us.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 154

Way, Dependency

“Today's biggest headlines are stories about people who thought they were doing something that was secret: Jesse Jackson's secret girlfriend and child, Monica Lewinski's private meetings with the president and confidential girl talk with Linda Tripp. Just think of the news stories we've watched on television…”

Ted Haggard (1956) American minister

[Haggard, Ted, Letters from Home, Regal Books, March 2003, p. 14, ISBN 0830730583]

People, Secret, Girl, Thinking

“Asimov: Science fiction always bases its future visions on changes in the levels of science and technology. And the reason for that consistency is simply that—in reality—all other changes throughout history have been irrelevant and trivial. For example, what difference did it make to the people of the ancient world that Alexander the Great conquered the Persian Empire? Obviously, that event made some difference to a lot of individuals. But if you look at humanity in general, you'll see that life went on pretty much as it had before the conquest.
On the other hand, consider the changes that were made in people's daily lives by the development of agriculture or the mariner's compass… and by the invention of gunpowder or printing. Better yet, look at recent history and ask yourself, "What difference would it have made if Hitler had won World War II?" Of course, such a victory would have made a great difference to many people. It would have resulted in much horror, anguish, and pain. I myself would probably not have survived.
But Hitler would have died eventually, and the effects of his victory would gradually have washed out and become insignificant—in terms of real change—when compared to such advances as the actual working out of nuclear power, the advent of television, or the invention of the jet plane.”

Isaac Asimov (1920–1992) American writer and professor of biochemistry at Boston University, known for his works of science fiction …

Mother Earth News interview (1980)

Life, Pain, War, People

“President Reagan brought us to the ultimate: America As Total Television. During his governance the printed word simply ceased to matter. White House dynamos had once telephoned newspapers to complain about unfair reporting. Not anymore. Now they telephoned network bosses. Even then it wasn't poor reporting they complained about, but poor pictures.
A network reporter who thought her report on shortcomings in Reaganland would anger the President's cadres was amazed when the man in charge of propaganda thanked her for doing them a good turn. But, she said, that was a tough piece of reporting.
Oh, the words may have been, said the gentleman, but on television words didn't matter. What mattered were pictures. And the pictures had been wonderful.”

Russell Baker (1925–2019) writer and satirst from the United States

"'Star Wars' Mania" (p.346)
There's a Country in My Cellar (1990)

Housing, Anger

“Have you guys noticed that Madonna is British now? OK, let's talk about her lineage for a minute. Raised in Michigan, moved to New York, is British. She started turning British like at the Golden Globes and she was doing the interviews and she says "telly" instead of "television" and she uses the word "actually" way too much and then she's also sorta bringing her voice down to a register around here (brings her voice down) and she's being interviewed for the Golden Globes and she's got whole, you know, crazy hair that everybody hated and everybody has and they were saying, "Well, Madonna, we're so glad to have you at the Golden Globes." (speaks in Madonna British accent) "Well, actually, it is more fun to come here than watch it on the telly". You know. Look, I'm from the midwest- its a TV.”

Kathy Griffin (1960) American actress and comedian

Hot Cup Of Talk (1998)

Hate, Way, Guy

“For three hundred years the race had glazed windows. Then they shut themselves up in little air-conditioned boxes and stared at silly television pictures instead. One might as well be on Luna.”

Robert A. Heinlein book Farmer in the Sky

Source: Farmer in the Sky (1950), Chapter 16, “Line Up” (p. 161)

Box

“I don’t mind people admiring me if they want to but I don’t think it’s very logical. It’s not like I was St. George knocking off some dumb dragon or anything like that. First of all, you’re talking about something I did a long, long time ago. Secondly, we were doing things that were not expected to last a lifetime. We figured they’d last about three years and then disappear forever. Remember there was no television back then and no place for the cartoons to go after they left the theaters. But I’m not trying to demean what we did. I always took the work very seriously and I’m proud to have been associated with the work we did. It’s just that adulation is impractical and makes me uncomfortable. Nobody noticed us back then. Nobody called us geniuses. And we didn’t feel like artists. We were just trying to make people laugh.”

Chuck Jones (1912–2002) American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films

Orange County Register, October 22, 1989

People, Feeling, Thinking, Time

“I walk through rooms of the dead, streets of the dead, cities of the dead: men without eyes, men without voices; men with manufactured feelings and standard reactions; men with newspaper brains, television souls and high school ideals.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

in Sunlight Here I Am: Interviews and Encounters, 1963-1993 (2003), p. 24

Men, School, Feeling, Soul

“What is video art? How does it differ from commercial television? Is video art linked to such traditional art forms as painting and sculpture? Is it a totally new phenomenon?”

Gregory Battcock (1937–1980)

Gregory Battcock. New Artists’ Video, an anthology, (1978) p. xiii. Introduction:
Listing of the several general questions to which video art gave rise to in those days.

Art, Painting

“(Television) We are aggressively striking the terrorists in Iraq, defeating them there so that we will not have to face them in our own country. (Sylvia) Oh, good. So once we get rid of those, there won't be any more.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 105

Country

“There are more whipped guys on television than there were on the Amistad.”

Greg Giraldo (1965–2010) American comedian

Midlife Vices (2009)

Guy

“When we say expanded cinema we actually mean expanded consciousness. Expanded cinema does not mean computer films, video phosphors, atomic light, or spherical projections. Expanded cinema isn't a movie at all: like life it's a process of becoming, man's ongoing historical drive to manifest his consciousness outside of his mind, in front of his eyes. One no longer can specialize in a single discipline and hope truthfully to express a clear picture of its relationships in the environment. This is especially true in the case of the intermedia network of cinema and television, which now functions as nothing less than the nervous system of mankind.”

Gene Youngblood book Expanded Cinema

Preface
Expanded Cinema, 1970

Life, Hope, Light

“I want to thank all the right-wing organizations out there who tried to stop the film, either from their harassment campaign that didn't work on the theatre owners, or going to the FEC to get our ads removed from television, to all the things that have been said on television. It's only encouraged more people to go and see it. We are happy to announce that the efforts of the small-minded few have failed miserably.”

Michael Moore (1954) American filmmaker, author, social critic, and liberal activist

On the movie Fahrenheit 9/11 breaking box office records. — Zap2it.com (27 June 2004) http://www.zap2it.com/movies/go?path=/movies/news/story&general_id=22014 2004, Fahrenheit 9/11 (2004)

People, Effort, Happiness

“No man can fully grasp how far and how fast we have come, but condense, if you will, the 50 thousand years of man's recorded history in a time span of but a half-century. Stated in these terms, we know very little about the first 40 years, except at the end of them advanced man had learned to use the skins of animals to cover them. Then about 10 years ago, under this standard, man emerged from his caves to construct other kinds of shelter. Only five years ago man learned to write and use a cart with wheels. Christianity began less than two years ago. The printing press came this year, and then less than two months ago, during this whole 50-year span of human history, the steam engine provided a new source of power. Newton explored the meaning of gravity. Last month electric lights and telephones and automobiles and airplanes became available. Only last week did we develop penicillin and television and nuclear power, and now if America's new spacecraft succeeds in reaching Venus, we will have literally reached the stars before midnight tonight.
This is a breathtaking pace, and such a pace cannot help but create new ills as it dispels old, new ignorance, new problems, new dangers. Surely the opening vistas of space promise high costs and hardships, as well as high reward.
So it is not surprising that some would have us stay where we are a little longer to rest, to wait. But this city of Houston, this state of Texas, this country of the United States was not built by those who waited and rested and wished to look behind them. This country was conquered by those who moved forward — and so will space.”

John F. Kennedy (1917–1963) 35th president of the United States of America

Source: 1962, Rice University speech

History, Star, Problem, Light

“By the summer of 2012, the majority of the televisions you see in stores will have Google TV embedded.”

Eric Schmidt (1955) software engineer, businessman

Eric Schmidt: Google TV on 'majority' of new TVs by summer 2012 http://theverge.com/2011/12/7/2618225/eric-schmidt-le-web-paris-google-tv-majority-all-tvs in The Verge (7 December 2011).

Summer

“The Government's policies of controlling local authority spending, cutting National Health spending and promoting private medicine and care for the elderly are a return to the workhouse. The only difference is that it is a capitalist workhouse rather than a discreet workhouse stuck away in the hills outside the town…Care for the elderly is an important issue. It cannot be left to volunteers, charities or to people going out with collecting boxes to see that old people are looked after properly. The issue is central to our demands for a caring society. That means an end to the cuts and an end to the policy of attacking those authorities that try to care for the elderly. Instead, there should be support for and recognition of those demands. Elderly people deserve a little more than pats on the head from Conservative Members. They deserve more than the platitudinous nonsense talked about handing the meals on wheels service over to the WRVS or any other volunteer who cares to run it. Instead, there should be a recognition that those who have worked all their lives to create and provide the wealth that the rest of us enjoy deserve some dignity in retirement. They do not deserve poverty, or to be ignored in their retirement, having to live worrying whether to put on the gas fire, or boil the kettle for a cup of tea, or whether they can afford a television licence or a trip out. They should not have to wonder whether the home help who has looked after them so long will be able to continue. The issue is crucial. The motion says clearly that care for the elderly comes before the promotion of policies that merely increase the wealth of those who are already the wealthiest in our society.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1984/feb/22/care-of-the-elderly in the House of Commons (22 February 1984). 1980s

People, Health, Home, Support

“The imagination of teenagers is often -- I'm tempted to say always -- the only sure capital they possess apart from the love of their parents, which is a force far beyond their capacity to comprehend or control.During my own adolescence, my imagination, the kingdom inside my own skull, was my sole source of refuge, my fortress of solitude, at times my prison. Like all teenagers, I provisioned my garrison with art: books, movies, music, comic books, television, role-playing games. Given their nature as human creations, as artifacts and devices of human nature, some of the provisions I consumed were bound to be of a dark, violent, even bloody and horrifying nature; otherwise I would not have cared for them.”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Nanny Nation http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2004/04/15/EDG8D64JFR1.DTL, San Francisco Chronicle (April 15, 2004)

Love, Books, Art, Music

“Today kids are more advanced, smarter. When we came in reality show we were untrained in terms of facing television. That time TV was just starting out. We were nervous and shy. Today`s kids have seen it all.”

Shreya Ghoshal (1984) Indian playback singer

Talking about kids(2) http://zeenews.india.com/entertainment/musicindia/singers-today-have-more-space-and-work-says-shreya-ghoshal_132464.html

Reality, Time

“You know, I understand how you feel. This is a really contentious issue. Probably as contentious, and potentially as troubling as the abortion issue in this country. All I can tell you is, rushes to pass legislation at a time of national crisis or mourning, I don't really think are proper. And more importantly, nothing in any of this legislation would have done anything to prevent that awful tragedy in Littleton.What I see in the work I've done with kids is, is troubling direction in our culture. And where I see consensus, which is I think we ought to concentrate on in our culture is… look… nobody argues anymore whether they're Conservatives or Liberal whether our society is going in the wrong direction. They may argue trying to quantify how far it's gone wrong or why it's gone that far wrong, whether it's guns, or television, or the Internet, or whatever. But there's consensus saying that something's happened. Guns were much more accessible 40 years ago. A kid could walk into a pawn shop or a hardware store and buy a high-capacity magazine weapon that could kill a lot of people and they didn't do it.The question we should be asking is… look… suicide is a tragedy. And it's a horrible thing. But 30 or 40 years ago, particularly men, and even young men, when they were suicidal, they went, and unfortunately, blew their brains out. In today's world, someone who is suicidal sits home, nurses their grievance, develops a rage, and is just a suicidal but they take 20 people with them. There's something changed in our culture.</p”

Tom Selleck (1945) American actor

On The Rosie O'Donnell Show on May 19th, 1999.

Men, People, World, Feeling

“You know, the media and the politicians would have us believe that there's something inherently immoral about terrorism. That is, they would have us believe that it's not immoral for us to destroy a pharmaceutical factory in Sudan with cruise missiles, but it is immoral for someone like Bin Laden to blow up a government building in Washington with a truck bomb. It's okay for us to take out an air-raid shelter full of women and children in Baghdad with a smart bomb, but it's cowardly and immoral for an Iraqi or Iranian agent to pop a vial of sarin in a New York subway tunnel. Really, what should we expect? They don't have aircraft carriers and cruise missiles and stealth bombers. So should we expect them to just sit there and take their punishment when we wage war on them? I think that it is the most reasonable thing in the world for them to hit back at us in the only way they can. It actually takes more courage to be a terrorist behind enemy lines than it does to push the firing button for a cruise missile a hundred miles away from your target. And yet we certainly will see Bill Clinton and every other Jew-serving politician in our government on television denouncing as a "cowardly act" the first terrorist bomb which goes off in the United States as a result of a war against Iraq. And don't be surprised when the FBI and the CIA announce that they have studied the evidence carefully and have determined that it was Iranian terrorists who built the bomb, so that the Jews will have an excuse for expanding the war to take out Iran as well as Iraq.”

William Luther Pierce (1933–2002) American white nationalist

Why War? (November 21, 1998) http://web.archive.org/web/20070324011124/http://www.natvan.com/pub/1998/112198.txt, American Dissident Voices Broadcast of November 21, 1998 http://archive.org/details/DrWilliamPierceAudioArchive308RadioBroadcasts 1990s, 1990

Women, War, Children, World

“For the first time in human history a child is born into a home in which television is on an average of about seven hours a day. In some countries a little more in some countries a little less, but in all industrial countries this is about the situation. And for the first time in human history most of the stories are told not by the parent, not by the school, not by the church, not by the tribe or the community, and in many places not even by the native country, but by a relatively small and shrinking group of global conglomerates who have something to sell. And it changes in a very fundamental way, the cultural climate, the cultural environment into which our children are born, in which they grow up, in which they become socialized, in which they become human beings.”

George Gerbner (1919–2005) American writer, freelancer and sociologist

The Killing Screens: Media and the Culture of Violence, Media Education Foundation (1994) Online transcript http://www.mediaed.org/assets/products/111/transcript_111.pdf

Children, School, Way, Home

“What bothers me about television is that it takes our minds off our minds.”

Robert Orben (1928) American magician and writer

Tom Waller (March 13, 1991) "Neighbors Grapevine", Wisconsin State Journal, p. 1.
Attributed

“So I repeat that while theoretically and technically television may be feasible, yet commercially and financially, I consider it an impossibility; a development of which we need not waste little time in dreaming.”

Lee De Forest (1873–1961) American inventor

1926, as quoted in [Gawlinski, Mark, Interactive television production, 2003, Focal Press, 0-240-51679-6, 89]

Dreams, Time

“This is not about the aesthetics: there is a rule in a society: "Whoever you deal with, makes you become them", therefore watching the efforts of para-athletes, which are nevertheless very admirable, can bring the temporary mobility disorder. If we want humanity to develop, the television should show us people who are healthy, beautiful, strong, honest and wise - not perverts, murderers, weaklings, losers, idiots or, unfortunately, invalids.”

Janusz Korwin-Mikke (1942) polish politician

Polish: I nie chodzi o estetykę: w społeczeństwie obowiązuje zasada: „Z kim przestajesz, takim się stajesz”, więc i oglądanie – godnych podziwu skądinąd – wysiłków para-sportowców może przynieść – przejściowe, na szczęście – zaburzenia w motoryce!). Jeśli chcemy, by ludzkość się rozwijała, w telewizji powinnismy ogladac ludzi zdrowych, pieknych, silnych, uczciwych, madrych – a nie zboczeńców, morderców, słabeuszy, nieudaczników, kiepskich, idiotów – i inwalidów, niestety. Source: Blog of the autor http://3obieg.pl/para-olimpiada-czyli-paranoja

People, Beauty, Effort, Strong

“We need to launch a nationwide campaign against superstition and belief in witchcraft. Nigerians should be told that witches are not real, and that witches and spirits are imaginary entities created by primitive minds during the infancy of human race to explain situations and issues they could not understand or resolve commonsensically. This campaign should be taken to all Nigerian schools, colleges and universities. It should be publicized over the radios and television, in the newspapers, in market places, in churches and mosques. In particular, we need to check the activities of our so called pastors and other self styled men and women of God who use the Bible or Holy books to perpetrate and justify atrocious acts and human right abuses. These religious charlatans continue to act and preach in ways that reinforce the belief in witches and provoke acts of witch accusation, persecution and killing. This has been the driving force in Akwa Ibom State, and until Nigerians learn to reject superstition and irrationalism such tragedies will continue to occur.”

Leo Igwe (1970) Nigerian human rights activist

Saving Child Witches: A Nigerian Perspective http://enblog.mukto-mona.com/2008/12/14/saving-child-witches-a-nigerian-perspective/ (December 14th, 2008)

Women, Men, God, Books

“Our point isn’t to make an examination of popular film but to illustrate that the yearning for a heroic adventure lies just beneath the surface of our consciousness; film, television, literature, sports, and travel are in a sense vicarious adventures.”

Alan Hirsch (1959) South African missionary

Source: The Faith of Leap (2011), p. 110

Travel, Literature, Sense, Sport

“Almost anyone who loves tennis and follows the men's tour on television has, over the last few years, had what might be termed Federer moments. These are times, watching the young Swiss at play, when the jaw drops and eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you're OK”

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

Federer Both Flesh and Not
Essays

Love, Men, Time

“In fact, a very similar phrase was invented to account for the sudden transition of wood, metal, plastic and concrete into an explosive condition, which was "nonlinear, catastrophic structural exasperation," or to put it another way--as a junior cabinet minister did on television the following night in a phrase which was to haunt the rest of his career--the check-in desk had just got "fundamentally fed up with being where it was."”

Douglas Adams The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul

Source: The Long Dark Tea-Time of the Soul (1988), Ch. 2

Way, Night

“I think sometimes that people assume because I'm on television I'm an expert, but I think the whole point of what I do is that I'm not and I don't have any training. My approach isn't about a fancy ingredient or style. I cook what I love to eat.”

Nigella Lawson (1960) British food writer, journalist and broadcaster

As quoted in "British sensation Lawson says cooking should be about fun, family" by Beth Cooney in Oakland Tribune (4 June 2003)

Love, People, Thinking, Training

“Soon, if we are not prudent, millions of people will be watching each other starve to death through expensive television sets.”

Aneurin Bevan (1897–1960) Welsh politician

In Place of Fear (William Heinemann Ltd, 1952), p. 192
1950s

Death, People

“The good people of Iowa have debated issues ranging from nuclear Armageddon to universal health care. And then there’s 2016, when the top two Republican candidates in the dwindling hours before caucusgoers pick a nominee are throwing around this question: “How stupid are the people of Iowa?” It was Donald Trump who first raised the issue of Hawkeye State imbecility, in a mocking reference to a crush that Iowans had on Ben Carson last fall. And it’s the odious Ted Cruz who has been using Trump’s very words to goad Iowans into proving that they are not, in fact, so stupid as to back an ego-inflamed reality television star who makes fun of them.”

Timothy Egan (1954) American writer

How Stupid Is Iowa? (2016)

People, Health, Stupidity, Star

“The soft seduction of consumer global capitalism reduce the nations of the West to a rootless mass of Americanised consumers, without identity, without pride and without a future. Children identify with the grotesque and vulgar instead of noble heroes and beautiful princesses in castles. Teenagers ape the antics of degenerate pop-stars whose example leads hundreds of thousands into the living death of drug addiction, not to mention the tragedy of the image conscious girls (mainly) who feel compelled to starve themselves to get "the look" and of course the spiralling number of abortions. Adults perform meaningless jobs, in conditions of mind-destroying boredom, to earn enough money to buy the latest needlessly created want to be pushed on television as the thing without which their neighbours will regard them as worthless failures. Old folk die unnoticed and lie rotting for weeks, even months, in barred and bolted flats in inhuman tower blocks, unofficial prisons which become tombs for those who no longer have any economic value. Do not be fooled by the glossy packaging of the consumer society. Where state socialism was a creed of terror and stagnation, capitalism is one of apathy and death.”

Nick Griffin (1959) British politician

Nick Griffin, The Deadly Twins.

Death, Money, Children, Lie

“Silly what's his name, the Shrek, whoever he was on the television this morning?”

Paul Keating (1944) Australian politician, 24th Prime Minister of Australia

Referring to Howard Government Minister Joe Hockey, Lateline interview, June 7 2007.

“After September 11th I had tons of interviews everywhere, except the United States of course, and often it was national radio and TV. A couple of times it turned out to be Irish television and BBC back to back, and the difference in reaction was startling. If I said this much on Irish TV, OK, discussion over, everyone understands what I'm talking about. You try to say it on BBC, you have to go on for like about an hour to explain to them what you mean. The Irish sea is a chasm, and it just depends who's been holding the whip for 800 years and who's been under it for 800 years.”

Noam Chomsky (1928) american linguist, philosopher and activist

In Noam Chomsky - Rebel Without a Pause, 2003 http://sf.indymedia.org/news/2003/05/1614027.php Quotes 2000s, 2003

Understanding, Time, Dependency, Sea

“Nowadays children look at everyone in the magazines and they want to be a basketball star or on a television show, but there is only so many people who can do those things and not that you shouldn’t aim or dream for these things, but there are so many other fantastic jobs. So it’s good to talk about how to get there and how difficult it is to get there.”

Heidi Klum (1973) German model, television host, businesswoman, fashion designer, television producer, and actress

Quoted by Hollie McKay for Fox News, 30 September 2009.

Children, People, Dreams, Star

“Radio through television becomes a species of Cinema. Why shouldn't Cinema, in turn, become a species of radio?”

Isidore Isou (1925–2007) Romanian-born French poet, film critic and visual artist

Venom and Eternity (1951), Danielle's Monologue

“Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.”

Paul Erdős (1913–1996) Hungarian mathematician and freelancer

As quoted in Comic Sections : The Book of Mathematical Jokes, Humour, Wit, and Wisdom (1993) by Des MacHale

Education

“Eric's not retiring from television entirely, but only from daily journalism, and that means, of course, this broadcast. It's not only his beautifully-chosen words of wisdom that we shall miss — to this newsman, he's one of the finest essayists of this century — but we shall also miss our almost daily contacts with him in the pursuit of our craft, in which his rare insight and unswerving integrity were a constant source of professional guidance. And yes, it's also true that we shall be the poorer in our self-esteem for no longer being able to call him "colleague," but that's the way it is: Wednesday, November 30, 1977. This is Walter Cronkite, CBS News; good night.”

Walter Cronkite (1916–2009) American broadcast journalist

On Eric Sevareid's retirement (1977)

Wisdom, Way, Night

“Down through the ceiling comes a fire siren and people screaming that we're supposed to ignore. The gunshots and tires squeeling, sounds wee have to pretend are okay. They don't mean anything. It's just television. An explosion vibrates down from the upstairs. A woman begs someone not to rape her. It's not real. It's just a movie. We're the culture that cried wolf.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Lullaby

Source: Lullaby (2002), Chapter 17

People, Wolf

“I have said, and I believe, that potentially we have in this country a free enterprise system of radio and television which is superior to any other. But to achieve its promise, it must be both free and enterprising. There is no suggestion here that networks or individual stations should operate as philanthropies. But I can find nothing in the Bill of Rights or in the Communications Act which says that they must increase their net profits each year, lest the Republic collapse.”

Edward R. Murrow (1908–1965) Television journalist

RTNDA Convention Speech (1958)

Communication, Country

“This is what I give. I give an expression of care every day to each child, to help him realize that he is unique. I end the program by saying, 'You've made this day a special day, by just your being you. There's no person in the whole world like you; and I like you just the way you are.' And I feel that if we in public television can only make it clear that feelings are mentionable and manageable, we will have done a great service for mental health.”

Fred Rogers (1928–2003) American television personality

Testimony before U.S. Senate committee, May 1, 1969. Featured in Fred Rogers: America's Favorite Neighbor (television documentary), 2003.

Health, World, Way, Feeling

Richard Dawkins (1941) English ethologist, evolutionary biologist and author

The Richard Dimbleby Lecture: Science, Delusion and the Appetite for Wonder (1996)

Way, Science

“Reporter: Would a reasonable observer say that you are potentially vulnerable to blackmail by Russia or by its intelligence agencies?
Trump: Lemme just tell you what I do. When I leave our country, I’m a very high-profile person, would you say? I am extremely careful. I’m surrounded by bodyguards. I’m surrounded by people. And I always tell them — anywhere, but I always tell them if I’m leaving this country, “Be very careful, because in your hotel rooms and no matter where you go, you’re gonna probably have cameras.” I’m not referring just to Russia, but I would certainly put them in that category. And number one, “I hope you’re gonna be good anyway. But in those rooms, you have cameras in the strangest places. Cameras that are so small with modern technology, you can’t see them and you won’t know. You better be careful, or you’ll be watching yourself on nightly television.” I tell this to people all the time. I was in Russia years ago, with the Miss Universe contest, which did very well — Moscow, the Moscow area did very, very well. And I told many people, “Be careful, because you don’t wanna see yourself on television. Cameras all over the place.”
And again, not just Russia, all over. Does anyone really believe that story? I’m also very much of a germaphobe, by the way, believe me.”

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

Trump Press Conference at Trump Tower https://www.nytimes.com/2017/01/11/us/politics/trump-press-conference-transcript.html,Donald (11 January 2017) 2010s, 2017, January

People, Hope, Way, Intelligence

“Trains, planes, cars, rockets, telescopes, tires, telephones, radios, television, electricity, atomic energy, computers, and fax machines. All miracles made possible by the minds and spirits of men with names like Ampere, Bell, Caselli, Edison, Ohm, Faraday, Einstein, Cohen, Teller, Shockley, Hertz, Marconi, Morse, Popov, Ford, Volta, Michelin, Dunlop, Watt, Diesel, Galileo, and other "dead white males." … The great majority of advancements past and present have been brought about by the genius and inventiveness of that most "despicable" of colors and genders, the dreaded white male, or, to be exact, by specific, individual white males. This is not to discredit the many contributions coming from nonwhites, but fact is fact. Our most important and consequential inventions have come almost exclusively from white males. … If you eliminate, suppress, or debase the while male, you kill the goose that laid the golden egg. If you ace him out with "affirmative" action, exile him from the family, teach him that he's a blight on mankind, then bon voyage to our society. We will devolve into a Third World cesspool. Where has there ever before in history been a group of human beings who have brought about the likes of the Magna Carta, the U. S. Constitution, and the countless life-saving and life-improving inventions that we now enjoy? … Does this mean we should sit back and let ourselves be governed by someone just because he's a white male? Of course, it doesn't. It means simply that we shouldn't suppress anyone, including white males. Let our God-given gifts run free in a free and just society, free from the oppression and tyranny of social engineers. If anyone has gifts beyond our own—be he a white male or other—be grateful. Maybe we have gifts that in some small way can contribute something of value as well. One way or another, we're all in the same boat. Few of us have truly outstanding gifts. And most of us have to humbly accept that there are others around who are more gifted than we are. In a Democratic society, it's not for Big Brother to decide who shall thrive and who shall struggle in the hive.”

Michael Savage (1942) U.S. radio talk show host, Commentator, and Author

Source: The Savage Nation: Saving America from the Liberal Assault on Our Borders, Language and Culture (2003), pp. 136–138; "White Male Inventions" http://www.dadi.org/ms_dwm.htm (December 15, 1999)

Life, Men, God, World

“Bradley joined CBS's 60 Minutes as coeditor in the 1981–1982 season. He also anchored and reported special broadcasts on 60 Minutes II. Bradley's first full-time work in television was as a war correspondent for CBS News during the Vietnam War. … He has received numerous Emmy Awards for his work, one for a 1981 interview with Lena Horne.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

[54, Historical Dictionary of African-American Television, 081086522X, Kathleen Fearn-Banks, 2005, Scarecrow Press, Inc]
About

War, Time, Season

“Even from the beginning, when I was doing junk television, I still had this focus. I knew I wasn't going to be doing that forever, that I wasn't going to be like that…”

Michelle Pfeiffer (1958) American actress

Vanity Fair (1989) http://www.pfeiffertheface.com/Mag_1989-02_Vanity.htm

“I leave you gentleman now. You will now write it; you will interpret it; that's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know…. just think how much you're going to be missing. You don't have Nixon to kick around any more, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference, and I hope that what I have said today will at least make television, radio, the press recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they're against a candidate give him the shaft, but also recognize if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who'll report what the candidate says now and then. Thank you, gentlemen, and good day.”

Richard Nixon book The Memoirs of Richard Nixon

Press conference after losing the election for Governor of California (November 7, 1962) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_RMSb-tS_OM; most reports used an official "Transcript of Nixon's News Conference on His Defeat by Brown in Race for Governor of California", as published in "The New York Times" (November 8, 1962), p. 18, also used in RN : The Memoirs of Richard Nixon (1978) and most published accounts which ended "You don't have Nixon to kick around any more because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference and it will be one in which I have welcomed the opportunity to test wits with you." 1960s

Hope, Thinking

“When I was a kid, my parents had a 900-pound television on top of a TV tray. My dad's theory was, "Let him pull it on his head a few times, he'll learn. You wanna put a penny in the light socket? Try that out. OHH! Hurt like hell, didn't it? Don't do that no more."”

Jeff Foxworthy (1958) American stand-up comedian

You Might Be a Redneck If… (1993)

Hell, Parent, Light, Learning

“Unlike television — at least as it currently exists — the Internet is a medium of choice.”

Nicholas Negroponte (1943) American computer scientist

Being Nicholas, The Wired Interview by Thomas A. Bass http://archives.obs-us.com/obs/english/books/nn/bd1101bn.htm

“What redress is now open to Mr. Bennett to clear his name, which has been smeared over every newspaper and on television and radio? He has been effectively prevented from carrying out his work in this building. What redress is open to me, if I employ someone to work with me in my duties representing the people of Islington, North and I am frustrated in doing that by an opinion offered in secret by the secret service? Is that not a negation of the democracy for which the House stands, which is meant to allow a constituency to elect a Member of Parliament to carry out his duties to the best of his ability? On this occasion, I have deliberately been frustrated by secret evidence that is not made available to me or, publicly, to anyone.”

Jeremy Corbyn (1949) British Labour Party politician

Speech http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1987/oct/21/palace-of-westminster-security in the House of Commons (21 October 1987). 1980s

People, Secret, Democracy, Housing

“Romans disapproved of Greek sports because the athletes competed nude. That was shocking. On the other hand, people dripping with blood and dying for entertainment was fine. This is strangely similar to the moral standards of today's commercial television and family movies.”

John Ralston Saul (1947) Canadian author and essayist

On Equilibrium (2001)

People, Family, Sport

“There is an insistent tendency among serious social scientists to think of any institution which features rhymed and singing commercials, intense and lachrymose voices urging highly improbable enjoyment, caricatures of the human esophagus in normal and impaired operation, and which hints implausibly at opportunities for antiseptic seduction as inherently trivial. This is a great mistake. The industrial system is profoundly dependent on commercial television and could not exist in its present form without it.”

John Kenneth Galbraith book The New Industrial State

Source: The New Industrial State (1967), Chapter XVIII, Section 5, p. 208

Thinking, Singing, Dependency

“(Television) Women hold up half the sky. (Sylvia) Uh huh, but in a poor neighborhood.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 206

Women

“Television enjoys a de facto monopoly on what goes into the heads of a significant part of the population and what they think.”

Pierre Bourdieu (1930–2002) French sociologist, anthropologist, and philosopher

(1998: 18); as cited in: Helen Kelly-Holmes (2001) Minority Language Broadcasting: Breton and Irish. p. 8

Thinking, Parting

“(On the prospect of Thatcher's death) Be serious - this is just a fantasy, because if she were killed, would it actually make any difference? Would things get any better? Course they wouldn't; don't kid yourself. They'd get worse, because she would become a martyr – this monetarist martyr - a cult figure, like Eva Peron. Can you imagine the televised funeral? There she'd be, laid out in a glass coffin, in the blue gear, the hair-do and all the rest of it. She'd be laying there just really life-like - just like she was in life - a bit warmer. It would be on the telly. You thought Winston Churchill was bad; you can imagine what this would be like. And then, of course, it wouldn't stop at that. There would be films - The Night Brighton Rocked. There'd be musicals. Tim Rice would be churning out the musicals about her life - Magita. There'd be Elaine Page belting out the big numbers: 'Don't Cry for Me, Barnet Finchley”

Linda Smith (1958–2006) comedian

Token Women, 1984
Stand-up

Life, Death, Women, Music

“Now if we had the power
To bring our neighbors home from war,
They would have never missed a Christmas,
No more ribbons on their door.
And when you trust your television,
What you get is what you got.
Because when they own the information, oh
They can bend it all they want.”

John Mayer (1977) guitarist and singer/songwriter

Waiting on the World to Change
Song lyrics, Continuum (2006)

War, Home, Christmas

“Ed Bradley was an African American journalist who was best known as a correspondent on CBS's 60 Minutes. In recent years, he became a broadcast icon on that Sunday evening television show.”

Ed Bradley (1941–2006) News correspondent

About

“My old lip color could barely keep up with my busy schedule. In the time it takes to notice the wide discrepancy between my salary and that of my male peers, I'd have to reapply! In the seconds to count the number of women in high political office, seated on corporate executive boards and featured in film and television over the age of 40, my lip color would be as invisible as this glass ceiling only inches above my head! L'Oreal. Because I am worth it. And because holding myself to an impossible standard of beauty keeps me from starting a riot!”

Maria Bamford (1970) American actress and comedian

How to WIN! (2006)

Women, Age, Beauty, Color

“Personally, Mr. Blix is amiable and has a sense of humor; politically he is weak and easily fooled. I can think of few European officials less suitable for a showdown with Saddam. Indeed, it is with utter disbelief that I watch television news about Mr. Blix's negotiations with the Iraqi dictator's henchmen. […] Regardless of how this crisis develops from this point, the United Nations has neglected its duties by asking a wimp to lead the inspectors who are supposed to stand up to the brute of Baghdad.”

Hans Blix (1928) Swedish politician

Per Ahlmark, Former Deputy Prime Minister of Sweden (Liberal Party), in The Washington Times, November 1, 2002. http://web.archive.org/web/20030412193910/http://www.washtimes.com/commentary/20021101-47209425.htm

Fools, Thinking, Sense, Personality

“The uniforms are my other memory. In the beginning, they looked odd. In the cricket world, we were used to playing in whites. Back then, the world was changing, television was changing and you needed people to see more colour. So, I think they did a great thing.”

Kapil Dev (1959) Indian cricketer

Beating Pakistan, Kapil Dev's fondest 1992 World Cup memory

People, World, Thinking, Memory

“Scientists are used to debating with one another about the finer points of new research. But increasingly, they find themselves battling their televisions and computer screens, which transmit ever-more-heated rhetoric from politicians, pundits, and other public figures who misinterpret, misrepresent, and malign scientific results.”

Lewis M. Branscomb (1926) physicist and science policy advisor

Lewis M. Branscomb and Andrew A. Rosenberg, " Science and Democracy http://the-scientist.com/2012/10/01/science-and-democracy" The Scientist, October 1, 2012.

“If young people don’t like reading, let’s not blame television or the modern world or school. Or rather, blame them all, but only after asking what we have done to that ideal reader since the days when we played at being both storyteller and book.”

Daniel Pennac (1944) French author

The Rights of the Reader (2008 translation by Sarah Adams)

People, Books, World, School

“Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.”

E. B. White (1899–1985) American writer

"Removal" (July 1938)
One Man's Meat (1942)

Forgetting

“Please, do not adjust your television set.”

Steve McManaman (1972) English footballer

2010s, 2014 FIFA World Cup, Brazil v. Germany (2014)

“My parents seem to me possessed of great dignity. An aristocratic reserve. Like the very rich who live behind tall walls, my mother and father are always mindful of the line separating public from private life. Watching a celebrity talk show on television, they listen for several minutes as a movie star with bright teeth recounts details of his recent divorce. And I see my parents grow impatient. Finally, my mother gets up from her chair. Changing the channel, she says with simple disdain, ‘Cheap people.’ My mother and my father are not cheap people. They never are tempted to believe that public life can also be intimate. And I realize that my parents will be as puzzled by my act of self-revelation as they are by the movie star’s revelations on the talk show. They never will call me cheap for publishing an autobiography. But I can well imagine their faces tightened by incomprehension as they read my words.”

Richard Rodríguez (1944) American journalist and essayist

Why does he do this?
Hunger of Memory: The Education of Richard Rodriguez (1982)

Life, People, Imagination, Star

“Growing up with violence, with inescapable expertly choreographed brutality in every home builds not only a kind of desensitization for it, but it also creates a market for violent entertainment by people for whom even what they see on television is not enough, is not graphic enough, is not explicit enough, and some movie productions, some big productions really cash in on that market. What is peculiar about this is that as time goes on, a greater dosage is necessary to satisfy this need.”

George Gerbner (1919–2005) American writer, freelancer and sociologist

The Killing Screens: Media and the Culture of Violence

People, Home, Time

“Nobody seriously thinks of television as a viewer's mode of perception…No matter how much he wants people to look at his product, the advertiser doesn't realize that television is [the viewer's] way of looking at him, & not his way of reaching them.”

Northrop Frye (1912–1991) Canadian literary critic and literary theorist

Source: "Quotes", Notebooks and Lectures on the Bible and Other Religious Texts (2003), p. 95-6

People, Way, Thinking

“And you know what people, you ain’t gonna make a difference by buildin’ more bombs. And you ain’t gonna make a difference by puttin’ on more make-up and showin’ up on more television shows. And you’re not gonna make a difference by havin’ the loudest P. A., or the biggest crowd at your concerts. You’re gonna make a difference when you lay down your life, and in complete submission to God, choose to die with Him, in service, to other people…“For so many people that I know, Christianity is this matter of – it has everything to do with morals. ‘Christianity is a religion about morals.’ And they will even talk about Jesus, and they will say ‘Kids need to know about Jesus so that they – so that they won’t, uh – smoke, drink, or dance, or go with girls who do,’ and all that kind of thing, and I kinda go, ‘That’s not why people need to know about Jesus.’ The only reason – the only possible excuse for talking about Jesus is because—we need a Savior.”

Rich Mullins (1955–1997) American christian musician

The Lord's Prayer, Here in America CD http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Here_in_America (February 1994) In Concert

Life, God, People, Religion

“The censorship is such on television in the US that films like mine don't stand a chance.”

John Pilger (1939) Australian journalist

(2002) [author, http://www.sprword.com/mustwatch.html, Must Watch - Sprword.com - Spread the Word, Sprword.com, 2007-02-13, 2010-01-14]

Chance

“Our voices, our representation of ourselves, have been in the hands of others, namely men, since the beginning of the mediums of film and television. My main character in I've Heard the Mermaids Singing videotaped a confession that is used through the film. It's her way of having control over her definition of herself.”

Patricia Rozema (1958) Canadian film director

As quoted in When Women Call the Shots : The Developing Power and Influence of Women in Television and Film (1996) by Linda Seger, p. 117

Men, Way, Singing

“(to a caller) Take a walk. Go call a public television. In fact, go call the Obama FCC and tell 'em that I hung up on you, go ahead. Call a diversity chief and tell 'em I hung up on you, see if I care, you… you dummy, you… Look what I have to do for a living… With my education and what I've achieved, I have to talk to a… OK, let's stop right here, because I've had all I can take today.”

Michael Savage book The Savage Nation

The Savage Nation The Savage Nation (1995- ), 2009-11-19 Radio (Audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E5b709xZ36E) 2009

Education

“The repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.”

Clive James (1939–2019) Australian author, critic, broadcaster, poet, translator and memoirist

'Bovis and Basil'
Essays and reviews, Glued to the Box (1983)

People

“…[B]eing part of The L Word made me realize how much more television can be that what I had experienced in my lifetime in terms of being able to be of service to people. I had so many fans come up to me who were really deeply appreciative of the show and what it had meant for them and their own sense of identity and their own sense of inclusion in our society and in our culture.”

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

Interview with TV Drama Watch (4 February 2011) http://tvdramawatch.com/2011/02/04/the-chicago-code-interview-with-jennifer-beals/.

People, Sense, Parting

“There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?”

Dick Cavett (1936) American talk show host

Mocking the TV-violence debate, as quoted in Life, Vol. 18 (1995), p. 8 http://books.google.com/books?id=bNcxAQAAIAAJ&q=%22There's+so+much+comedy+on+television.+Does+that+cause+comedy+in+the+streets?%22&dq=%22There's+so+much+comedy+on+television.+Does+that+cause+comedy+in+the+streets?%22&hl=en&sa=X&ei=I23qTvzhLsWgtwfNmJCUCg&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAA

“I don't think it's a good idea for politicians to design television programmes, but what we can do is design policies - and by implementing those policies we help to create an environment in which talented people can do great things, and significant and dynamic creative companies can be built for this generation and the next generation. That means having the infrastructure, the skills, and the education. We need a clear vision. We need to identify the opportunities and provide the resources.”

Alex Salmond (1954) Scottish National Party politician and former First Minister of Scotland

Broadcasting Speech (August 8, 2007)

People, Education, Idea, Thinking

“The freedom of peoples depends fundamentally on the rule of law, a fair legal system. The place to have trials or accusations is a court of law, the Common Law that has come right up from Magna Carta, which has come right up through the British courts – a court of law is the place where you deal with these matters. If you ever get trial by television or guilt by accusation, that day freedom dies because you have not had it done with all of the careful rules that have developed in a court of law. Press and television rely on freedom. Those who rely on freedom must uphold the rule of law and have a duty and a responsibility to do so and not try to substitute their own system for it.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Criticising the Thames Television programme "Death on the Rock", in an interview with Hatsuhisa Takashima of NHK Japanese television (29 April 1988) http://www.margaretthatcher.org/speeches/displaydocument.asp?docid=107058 Third term as Prime Minister

People, Law, Freedom, Dependency

“The one kind of society that the Church cannot adjust to is no society at all, i. e., a setup where community has become so fragmented that a communal religion is a fiction, sustained only by talk and make-news items in the press and television.”

Wilfrid Sheed (1930–2011) English-American novelist and essayist

"Church," p. 120
Essays in Disguise (1990)

Religion, Communication

“Now you can see me in the flesh, and I don't really look as I'm made to look on television.”

Alec Douglas-Home (1903–1995) Former Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

D.E. Butler and Anthony King, "The British General Election of 1964", p. 147.
Remark frequently made during the 1964 general election campaign.
Prime Minister

“(Television) Spray and wash gets out what America gets into. (Sylvia) Send some to El Salvador.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 39

“If naturalists go to heaven (about which there is considerable ecclesiastical doubt), I hope that I will be furnished with a troop of kakapo to amuse me in the evening instead of television.”

Gerald Durrell (1925–1995) naturalist, zookeeper, conservationist, author and television presenter

Introduction to Quest for the Kakapo (1989) by David Butler, p. 6

Hope

“On May 17, 1969, a show which was to become the seminal exhibition of video art in the U. S. opened at the Howard Wise Gallery in New York City. That exhibition, "TV as a Creative Medium," effectively pointed to the diverse potential of a new art form and social tool. Subsequently, the show became renowned for the inspiration it provided for many artists and future advocates of video. The artists represented in the show, a few of whom are still involved in the medium today, came from varied backgrounds-painting, filmmaking, nuclear physics, avant-garde music and performance, kinetic and light sculpture-and their approaches presented a primer of the directions which video would soon take. Theoretically, they variously saw video as viewer participation, a spiritual and meditative experience, a mirror, an electronic palette, a kinetic sculpture, or acultural machine to be deconstructed. Ripe with ideas and armed with a heady optimism about the future of communications, these artists used video as an information tool and as a means of gaining understanding and control of television, not solely as an art form. In "TV as a Creative Medium" alternative television was presented as a stepping stone to the promised communications utopia.”

Marita Sturken (1957) American academic

Marita Sturken. " TV as a Creative Medium: Howard Wise and Video Art http://www.vasulka.org/archive/4-30c/AfterImageMay84(1004).pdf," in: Afterimage, May 1984

Art, Music, Communication, Idea

“People who are without writing have a fantastically precise knowledge of their environment and all their resources. All these things we have lost, but we did not lose them for nothing; we are now able to drive an automobile without being crushed at each moment, for example, or in the evening to turn on our television or radio. This implies a training of mental capacities which ‘primitive’ peoples don’t have because they don’t need them.”

Claude Lévi-Strauss (1908–2009) French anthropologist and ethnologist

Source: Myth and Meaning (1978), Chapter 2 : ‘Primitive’ Thinking and the ‘Civilized’ Mind

People, Knowledge, Training

“To me, torture would be watching sports on television.”

Quentin Tarantino (1963) American film director, screenwriter, producer, and actor

Playboy interview (November 1994 issue) http://www.tarantino.info/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=305&Itemid=41.

Sport

“In a society where there is no freedom of the press, it is difficult for victims to be noticed. Just take the example from yesterday: I had given a telephone interview to CNN. Then, suddenly, CNN was shut down for a couple of minutes. It was the first time I experienced that my television went totally dead. I realized: Oh my God, it’s because of me. This is crazy! Which nation would do that? Maybe Cuba, North Korea, China. But what do they want, what are they so afraid of?”

Ai Weiwei (1957) Chinese concept artist

2010-, Ai Weiwei Does Not Feel Powerful, 2011

God, Freedom, Time, Dead

“Bob Dylan: The media is all-pervasive. What can a writer think of to write that you don't see every day in a newspaper or on television?
Interviewer: …Do you think that TV and the media have killed poetry and literature?
Bob Dylan: Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. … What's a writer to do if every idea is exposed in the media before he can get to it or let it evolve? What's a writer gonna write about? … We're living in a science-fiction world. We're living in a world that Disney has conquered. Disney's science fiction. Theme parks, trendy streets, it's all science fiction. So I would say, if a writer has got something to say, he'll have to do it in that–
Interviewer: Outside of the real world?
Bob Dylan: There is a real world. Science fiction has become the real world. Whether we realize it or not, it has.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

The Rome Press Conference (23 July 2001)

World, Literature, Idea, Thinking

“On paper, it was all there. It's unlike anything else on television or streaming and that can either bode well for it, or work against it. And it has worked for this show in an incredible way.”

Jason Biggs (1978) American actor

On success of the show Orange Is the New Black, interviewed in: — December 4, 2014, Jason Biggs: I always win, The Belfast Telegraph, Heat magazine, June 15, 2014 http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/entertainment/news/jason-biggs-i-always-win-30355396.html,

Way

“"You kids think you invented sex," my mother was fond of saying. But hadn't we? With no instruction manual or federally enforced training period, didn't we all come away feeling we'd discovered something unspeakably modern? What produced in others a feeling of exhilaration left Jason and me with a mortifying feeling of guilt. We fled the room as if, in our fumblings, we had uncapped some virus we still might escape if we ran fast enough. Had one of the counselors not caught me scaling the fence, I felt certain I could have made it back to Raleigh by morning, skittering across the surface of the ocean like one of those lizards often featured on television wildlife programs.”

David Sedaris Naked

Essay: "I like guys". (p.106-107) [Page numbers per the 2006 Abacus paperback edition.]
Naked (1997)

Feeling, Sex, Training, Thinking

“If all our political and intellectual elite offers by way of a national culture is “pop music, gambling, fashionable clothes or television,” then we can neither mount a convincing intellectual defense against our enemies, nor hope to integrate intelligent, inquiring, and unfulfilled Muslim youths—young men principally, of course—to our way of life.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

The Cost of Frivolity http://www.city-journal.org/html/eon2007-02-01td.html (February 1, 2007). City Journal (1998 - 2008)

Life, Men, Youth, Hope

“You could argue people are generally better off now mentally than they were back then. We follow the natural cycles. We eat real food instead of processed crap full of chemicals. We're not jacked up on coffee and television and sexy advertising all the time. No more anxiety about credit card bills.”

James Howard Kunstler book World Made By Hand

Source: World Made By Hand (2008), Chapter 7, p. 37–38

People, Food, Coffee, Nature

“Yes, for most people nowadays television is their only contact with the world beyond their work.”

John Brunner book The Sheep Look Up

September “MINE ENEMIES ARE DELIVERED INTO MY HAND”
The Sheep Look Up (1972)

People, World

“One of the big secrets of finding time is not to watch television.”

Bob Keeshan (1927–2004) United States Marine

Reply to a question on "how he found time to star in his own show and still engage in lecturing, volunteerism, the study of French, reading, and also spend time with his family and his hobbies of photography, fishing and sailing", as quoted in "Bob Keeshan, Creator and Star of TV's 'Captain Kangaroo,' Is Dead at 76" in The New York Times (24 January 2004)

Secret, Time

“[Television, radio, and magazines] are so designed as to make thinking seem unnecessary (though this is only an appearance). The packaging of intellectual positions and views is one of the most active enterprises of some of the best minds of our day. The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.”

Mortimer J. Adler book How to Read a Book

Source: How to Read a Book (1940, 1972), p. 4

Way, Thinking, Effort, Appearance

“(Television) There's a special feeling about being a woman. You do so much for everyone around you. But some days (Sylvia) You realize you've been had.”

Nicole Hollander (1939) Cartoonist

Source: Sylvia cartoon strip, p. 223

Feeling

Quotes about television page 5

Quotes about television
page 5