Television Quotes: Memorable Moments and Musings

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

"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

"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 has made dictatorship impossible but democracy unbearable"

Shimon Peres, Statesman

"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

"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

"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

"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

"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

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

George Peppard, 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

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

Phil Donahue, Entertainer

"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

"Television saved the movies. The Internet is going to save the news business"

Matt Drudge, Journalist

"It gets kinda monotonous, but that's television. There are plus sides and down sides. The positive side is that you have steady work for nine months of the year for however many years your show is on TV,"

Alexis Bledel, Actress

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

Bill Hicks, Comedian

"I was wildly out of style when that television theme song suddenly pushed its way onto the Top Ten. It was certainly not the record company trying to make that happen"

John Sebastian, Musician

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

Jessica Savitch, Journalist

"I think everyone who makes movies should be forced to do television. Because you have to finish. You have to get it done, and there are a lot of decisions made just for the sake of making decisions. You do something because it's efficient and because it gets the story told and it connects to the audience"

Joss Whedon, Writer

"The making of television has changed quite a bit. Now you have to do them n cheaper budgets"

Bruce Boxleitner, Actor

"I was mostly interested in it as a theatrical film. Personally, I am not so interested in television, simply because I don't watch television myself. I'm into movies"

Bille August, Director

"And so I was doing that and starving and somebody said you should model and I ran when they told me how much money you could make and I did a television commercial the first job"

Sela Ward, Actress

"He has a very extensive public relations apparatus that is paid for by the taxpayers of this state. They are some of the best in the business. and he is a master at getting not only television but other media exposure on the basis of confrontation and chaos"

Bill Scott, Actor

"It is ridiculous that somebody picks up the phone and calls somebody they see on television. Why don't they call somebody in their area? Don't they know about that?"

Trisha Goddard, Entertainer

"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

"In television you go in with this operating system that it is a crapshoot"

David Ogden Stiers, Actor

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

William Gibson, Writer

"I never stopped making pictures. There were times when more of my income was coming from other sources, and I had to devote more time to television and movies and records"

Martin Mull, Actor

"Get me well so I can get on television and tell people to stop smoking"

Nat King Cole, Musician

"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

"Because what's going on now, and this applies mostly to television stations in the largest markets too, but TV stations basically are now the primary receivers of campaign spending"

Robert McChesney, Critic

"I never really wanted to be an actor. And that was the beginning of it, I began to write things down and eventually became a writer on a television show"

Barry Levinson, Director

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

Lee De Forest, Inventor

"The mass media in the days of newspapers and television it's hard to be able to find a story that's about just what you're interested in at the time you're interested in it"

Guy Burgess, Criminal

"And also there wasn't much money in television in those days anyhow"

Jim Henson, Entertainer

"And I believe that public broadcasting has an important trust with the American people, it's an intimate medium of television, and that we can do reading and language development for young children without getting into human sexuality"

Margaret Spellings, Public Servant

"Kennedy did not have to run the risk of having his ideas and his words shortened and adulterated by a correspondent. This was the television era, not only in campaigning, but in holding the presidency"

Hugh Sidey, Journalist

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