Television Quotes

"Many people have their reputations as reporters and analysts because they are on television, batting around conventional wisdom. A lot of these people have never reported a story"

Bob Woodward, Journalist

"Television doesn't make stars. It's the written media, the press, that makes stars"

Chevy Chase, Comedian

"Television is an invention that permits you to be entertained in your living room by people you wouldn't have in your home"

David Frost, Journalist

"I had - all my life, everybody who knew me thought that I would probably grow up to be a reporter, a newspaper reporter because we didn't have much television in those days"

Bob Schieffer, Journalist

"I've always wanted to be an actress, ever since I was a little girl. I always played the mom and I played my sister as the daughter. I wanted to be an actress on television and movies instead of just around the house"

Dakota Fanning, Actress

"It's about avoiding reality through various escape routes that become addictions and lead to Hell. My character is addicted to television, chocolate, coffee, to her dream of her son, which has no basis in reality"

Ellen Burstyn, Actress

"When I was first starting out, if you were acting on television, it was a real stigma"

Christine Lahti, Actress

"When I played Bobby Fischer, my opponent fought against organizations - the television producers and the match organizers. But he never fought against me personally. I lost to Bobby before the match because he was already stronger than I. He won normally"

Boris Spassky, Celebrity

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

David Frost, Journalist

"At thirteen I began modeling, doing my first television commercial in ninth grade for Pizza Hut"

Donna Rice, Celebrity

"We don't see the people who are doing real things getting enough props. We often see politicians who are everywhere but nowhere at the same goddamn time. You know the kind of person: You see them everywhere on television but nowhere in front of your face"

Chuck D., Musician

"Television really does offer still great parts for women, cable in particular"

Christine Lahti, Actress

"But it's true, when you see some television, you carry it with you. It's like 90210. Tell me what young shows were being done then... We were thrilled about the ratings around the world"

Aaron Spelling, Producer

"When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came"

Barry Levinson, Director

"I probably would be continuing to do voice-overs, continuing to do cartoon shows, and at the same time I'd probably be on a sitcom or a dramatic television show"

Casey Kasem, Actor

"But, I don't know, the violence, I can't even talk about. We don't do a lot of violent shows. When I started in television, breaking a pencil was a violent act"

Aaron Spelling, Producer

"I worked at a local television station and I got a chance to direct and do all those things - worked kiddie shows, Ranger House show with the hand puppets and things like that"

Barry Levinson, Director

"Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is"

Isaac Mizrahi, Designer

"Television provides the opportunity for an ongoing story - the opportunity to meld the cast and the characters and a world, and to spend more time there"

David Lynch, Director

"In day-to-day commerce, television is not so much interested in the business of communications as in the business of delivering audiences to advertisers. People are the merchandise, not the shows. The shows are merely the bait"

Les Brown, Businessman

"The thing that fascinates me is that the way I came to film and television is extinct. Then there were gatekeepers, it was prohibitively expensive to make a film, to be a director you had to be an entrepreneur to raise money"

Tom Hooper, Director

"There was a time when the FCC tried to require a certain amount of television and media to be educational, a certain amount to be newsworthy and a certain amount of it to be public access"

Montel Williams, Entertainer

"The success of The Simpsons really opened doors. It showed that if you were working in animation you didn't necessarily have to be working in kids' television"

Seth MacFarlane, Cartoonist

"When we did Top of the Pops for the third time, we decided to do it as a television program here called Come Dancing, which is not as rude as it sounds"

Neil Innes, Writer

"When the stock market crashed, Franklin Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the princes of greed. He said, 'Look, here's what happened.'"

Joe Biden, Vice President

"Unlike productions in the other arts, all television shows are born to destroy two other shows"

Les Brown, Businessman

"You must not demand the failure of your peers, because the more good things that are around in film, in television, in theater - why the better it is for all of us"

Jerome Lawrence, Playwright

"I have got up at truly deplorable hours in the morning to confront Vancouver's Jack Webster on television because I have been told that is the place to get exposure for ideas"

Barbara Amiel, Journalist

"Mass communication, radio, and especially television, have attempted, not without success, to annihilate every possibility of solitude and reflection"

Eugenio Montale, Poet

"For me, I think there's a lot more room in cable television to tell broader stories. NBC and the networks, they're all very mainstream, and they're a little more conservative in how they approach storytelling"

Gabriel Macht, Actor

"My father is an actor, and I used to go on set to visit him. I saw the stories he was telling and said: 'That's what I want to do.' I was always in awe whenever I went to the movies or when I watched television"

Gabriel Macht, Actor

"My mother had just died, and I had to walk a long way behind her coffin, surrounded by thousands of people watching me while millions more did on television. I don't think any child should be asked to do that, under any circumstances. I don't think it would happen today"

Prince Harry, Royalty

"Television is democracy at its ugliest"

Paddy Chayefsky, Playwright

"I've always had an inquisitive mind about everything from flowers to television sets to motor cars. Always pulled them apart - couldn't put 'em back, but always extremely interested in how things work"

Craig Johnston, Athlete

"I believe that people who do not vote in this country have no right to complain about the government that we are now living under. By the same token, if you don't really vote in television, you're never going to have your way. Write a letter to the president of the network"

Bill Bixby, Actor

"But reality television is here to stay"

Cilla Black, Musician

"I had spent many years before I was 31 hearing people tell me, Oh Man, you're so funny, you need to be in television. But that and a quarter won't get you on a bus"

Chi McBride, Actor

"Television viewers, they've been around a long time. They've been watching this thing now for 50 years. I mean, they know exactly what's happening when it comes to television programming. You can't put anything over on them anymore"

Maury Povich, Celebrity

"The internet is a total inversion of television. It's the opposite"

Joel Hodgson, Entertainer

"There were no competitions on television. The first skating competition I ever remember seeing on television was the 1968 Olympics when Peggy Fleming won"

Dorothy Hamill, Athlete

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