Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.
—Laurence J. Peter (1919–90) Canadian-born American Educator, Author
So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.
—Barbara Ehrenreich (1941–2022) American Social Critic, Essayist
The failures of the press have contributed immensely to the emergence of a talk-show nation, in which public discourse is reduced to ranting and raving and posturing.
—Carl Bernstein (1944–73) American Journalist, Writer
Television knows no night. It is perpetual day. TV embodies our fear of the dark, of night, of the other side of things.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks.
—Eric Sevareid (1912–92) American Journalist, Author
Television has brought back murder into the home—where it belongs.
—Alfred Hitchcock (1899–1980) British-born American Film Director, Film Producer
Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn’t have in your home.
—David Frost (1939–2013) English Broadcaster, Writer
People assume you can’t be shy and be on television. They’re wrong.
—Diane Sawyer (b.1945) American Journalist, TV Personality
Imagine what it would be like if TV actually were good. It would be the end of everything we know.
—Marvin Minsky (1927–2016) American Computer Scientist
The television, that insidious beast, that Medusa which freezes a billion people to stone every night, staring fixedly, that Siren which called and sang and promised so much and gave, after all, so little.
—Ray Bradbury (b.1920) American Novelist, Short Story Writer
I’m always amazed that people will actually choose to sit in front of the television and just be savaged by stuff that belittles their intelligence.
—Alice Walker (b.1944) American Novelist, Activist
Performing doesn’t turn me on. It’s an egomaniac business, filled with prima donnas—including this one.
—Dan Rather (b.1931) American Newscaster, Author
What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdad’s of his dreams to rise from the dust.
—Salvador Dali (1904–89) Spanish Painter
Imitation is the sincerest form of television.
—Fred Allen (1894–1956) American Humorist, Radio Personality
Television: chewing gum for the eyes.
—Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American Architect
I would rather live my life than watch another person’s life on T.V.
—Indian Proverb
Television was not intended to make human beings vacuous, but it is an emanation of their vacuity.
—Malcolm Muggeridge (1903–90) English Journalist, Author, Media Personality, Satirist
Star Trek fans usually know the metaphors of life better than most mainstream poets.
—Terri Guillemets
If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.
—John Lennon (1940–80) British Singer, Songwriter, Musician, Activist
There is nothing more mysterious than a TV set left on in an empty room. It is even stranger than a man talking to himself or a woman standing dreaming at her stove. It is as if another planet is communicating with you.
—Jean Baudrillard (1929–2007) French Sociologist, Philosopher
The television screen, so unlike the movie screen, sharply reduced human beings, revealed them as small, trivial, flat, in two banal dimensions, drained of color. Wasn’t there something reassuring about it!—that human beings were in fact merely images of a kind registered in one another’s eyes and brains, phenomena composed of microscopic flickering dots like atoms. They were atoms—nothing more. A quick switch of the dial and they disappeared and who could lament the loss?
—Joyce Carol Oates (b.1938) American Novelist, Short Story Writer, Playwright, Poet, Literary Critic
Television is not real life. In real life people actually have to leave the coffee shop and go to jobs.
—Bill Gates (b.1955) American Businessperson, Entrepreneur, Philanthropist, Author
I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.
—Dwight D. Eisenhower (1890–1969) American Head of State, Military Leader
Television is a medium of entertainment which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same time, and yet remain lonesome.
—T. S. Eliot (1888–1965) American-born British Poet, Dramatist, Literary Critic
The most puzzling thing about TV is the steady advance of the sponsor across the line that has always separated news from promotion, entertainment from merchandising. The advertiser has assumed the role of originator, and the performer has gradually been eased into the role of peddler.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
In the theater, while you recognized that you were looking at a house, it was a house in quotation marks. On screen, the quotation marks tend to be blotted out by the camera.
—Arthur Miller (1915–2005) American Playwright, Essayist
Television hangs on the questionable theory that whatever happens anywhere should be sensed everywhere. If everyone is going to be able to see everything, in the long run all sights may lose whatever rarity value they once possessed, and it may well turn out that people, being able to see and hear practically everything, will be specially interested in almost nothing.
—E. B. White (1985–99) American Essayist, Humorist
There’s a good deal in common between the mind’s eye and the TV screen, and though the TV set has all too often been the boobtube, it could be, it can be, the box of dreams.
—Ursula K. Le Guin (b.1929) American Science Fiction and Fantasy Writer
Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it.
—C. P. Scott (1846–1932) British Journalist, Editor, Politician
If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.
—Edward R. Murrow (1908–65) American Journalist, Radio Personality