Famous
Television Quotes
Everyone
has had television touch their life in one way or another. Here are some
famous faces who gave their insights and opinions on one of the most controversial
and revolutionary inventions in history.
"Television thrives on unreason,
and unreason thrives on television. It strikes at the emotions rather than
the intellect."
Sir Robin
Day, Financial Times (London, 8 Nov. 1989)
"Television has brought back
murder into the home- where it belongs."
Alfred
Hitchcock,
Observer (London, 19 Dec. 1965)
"Television is an excellent
system when one has nothing to lose, as is the case with a nomadic and
rootless country like the United States, but in Europe the affect of television
is that of a bulldozer which reduces culture to the lowest possible denominator"
Marc Fumaroli,
French commentator. Observer (London, 27 Oct. 1991)
"So why do people keep on
watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television
because television bring 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, U.S. author, columnist. The Worst Years of our Lives
(1991)
"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,
French semiologist. Cool Memories
(1987)
"Television is actually closer
to reality than anything in books. The madness of TV is the madness of
human life."
Camille
Paglia, U.S. author, critic, educator. Harper's (New York, March
1991)
"Anyone afraid of what he
thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world."
Clive
James, Australian writer, critic. Glued to the Box
(1983)
"I hate television. I hate
it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts."
Orson
Welles, U.S. filmmaker. New York Herald Tribune (12 Oct. 1956)
"Television was not invented
to make human beings vacuous, but is an emanation of their vacuity."
Malcolm
Muggeridge, British broadcaster. Tread Softly For You Tread on My
Jokes (1966)
"I find television very educational.
Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good
book."
Groucho
Marx, U.S. comic actor. Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion
(1984)
"The difference between writing
a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child
and having a baby made in a test tube."
Norman
Mailer, U.S. author. Village Voice (New York, 21 Jan. 1971)
"It is a medium of entertainment
which permits millions of people to listen to the same joke at the same
time, and yet remain lonesome."
T.S. Eliot,
Anglo-American poet, critic. New York Post (22 Sept. 1963)
"Man watches his history on
the screen with apathy and an occasional passing flicker of horror or indignation."
Conor
Cruise O'Brien, Irish historian, critic, diplomat. Irish Times
(Dublin,
16 July 1969)