Television Quotes: Memorable Moments and Musings

"Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort of the living room. Vietnam was lost in the living rooms of America - not on the battlefields of Vietnam"

Marshall McLuhan, Sociologist

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book"

Groucho Marx, Comedian

"The sky above the port was the color of television, tuned to a dead station"

William Gibson, Writer

"The printed page conveys information and commitment, and requires active involvement. Television conveys emotion and experience, and it's very limited in what it can do logically. It's an existential experience - there and then gone"

Bill Moyers, Journalist

"Television has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable"

Shimon Peres, Statesman

"Television is democracy at its ugliest"

Paddy Chayefsky, Playwright

"Television news is like a lightning flash. It makes a loud noise, lights up everything around it, leaves everything else in darkness and then is suddenly gone"

Hodding Carter, Journalist

"Television is chewing gum for the eyes"

Frank Lloyd Wright, Architect

"Television sounded really different than the Ramones sounded really different than us sounded really different than Blondie sounded really different than the Sex Pistols"

David Byrne, Musician

"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, Poet

"Television enables you to be entertained in your home by people you wouldn't have in your home"

David Frost, Journalist

"I think a newspaper should be provocative, stir 'em up, but you can't do that on television. It's just not on"

Rupert Murdoch, Publisher

"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, President

"I think it's brought the world a lot closer together, and will continue to do that. There are downsides to everything; there are unintended consequences to everything. The most corrosive piece of technology that I've ever seen is called television - but then, again, television, at its best, is magnificent"

Steve Jobs, Businessman

"You know what I want? The answer is, I truly don't know what I want. I don't want to do a television series. I want to do dramas as well as comedies, but I have no idea what kind or in what order. Just give me the chance at them"

Michael J. Fox, Actor

"Television has brought back murder into the home - where it belongs"

Alfred Hitchcock, Director

"Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some"

Alfred Hitchcock, Director

"We owe a lot to Thomas Edison - if it wasn't for him, we'd be watching television by candlelight"

Milton Berle, Comedian

"It's the first war we've ever fought on the television screen and the first war that our country ever fought where the media had full reign"

William Westmoreland, Soldier

"Carol Burnett was particularly funny. She swore for the first time on television on Larry Sanders"

Garry Shandling, Comedian

"Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye"

Bill Hicks, Comedian

"When I am working it is up early and coffee and 15 hours of being on the set. When I am not working, it is up late and coffee, golf or softball and hopefully a ball game on the television"

Mackenzie Astin, Actor

"To have my fan club. I am very proud of doing everything. I try to support my parents, friends and fans. I am also proud of my performing in the visual arts, and motion television"

Chris Burke, Actor

"While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commercially and financially it is an impossibility"

Lee De Forest, Inventor

"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper"

Rod Serling, Writer

"There are too many leaders anointed because they have a public voice - television, radio, or record, or whatever. That even includes myself. In the past, I'd say, 'Don't anoint me when you can anoint yourself.'"

Chuck D., Musician

"That is a big danger, losing your inspiration. When I work in film and television I try to do each take a little differently. I never want to do the same thing twice, because then you're not being spontaneous, you're just recreating something"

Karl Urban, Actor

"They put me on television. And the whole thing broke loose. It was wild, I tell ya for sure"

Elvis Presley, Musician

"I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts"

Orson Welles, Actor

"Janet Reno, during her confirmation hearings, said she would come down harder on porno, and lately she's talked about how violence on television has an effect on violence in the real world"

Penn Jillette, Entertainer

"Television is not the exclusive target of promoters. Is Superman really worthy of a Newsweek cover?"

Phil Donahue, Entertainer

"I don't watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself"

Stephen Fry, Comedian

"Television is a medium because anything well done is rare"

Fred Allen, Comedian

"Before I was shot, I always thought that I was more half-there than all-there - I always suspected that I was watching TV instead of living life. Right when I was being shot and ever since, I knew that I was watching television"

Andy Warhol, Artist

"We are already expected to be the goodie two shoes. I went through that during my junior high schools where I wasn't allowed to watch television. I wasn't allowed to listen to the radio"

Nick Cannon, Musician

"A modern revolutionary group heads for the television station"

Abbie Hoffman, Activist

"Every now and then, when you're on stage, you hear the best sound a player can hear. It's a sound you can't get in movies or in television. It is the sound of a wonderful, deep silence that means you've hit them where they live"

Shelley Winters, Actress

"The latest wrinkle is on wrinkles. There is a widespread belief that women can't grow old in television news"

Jessica Savitch, Journalist

"If the education of our kids comes from radio, television, newspapers - if that's where they get most of their knowledge from, and not from the schools, then the powers that be are definitely in charge, because they own all those outlets"

Maynard James Keenan, Musician

"It's not that I'm knocking the movie and television work"

George Peppard, Actor

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