Television Quotes

All television is children’s television. Richard P. Adler

Imitation is the sincerest form of television. Fred Allen

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

Television is now so desperately hungry for material that they’re scraping the top of the barrel. Gore Vidal

Television is chewing gum for the eyes. Frank Lloyd Wright

Television is the first truly democratic culture – the first culture available to everybody and entirely governed by what the people want. The most terrifying thing is what people do want. Clive Barnes

Television is for appearing on, not looking at. Noel Coward

Television is a device that permits people who haven’t anything to do to watch people who can’t do anything. Fred Allen

Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it. Alfred Hitchcock

Another possible source of guidance for teenagers is television, but television’s message has always been that the need for truth, wisdom and world peace pales by comparison with the need for a toothpaste that offers whiter teeth and fresher breath. Dave Barry

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

When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships. Andy Warhol

I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts. Orson Welles

Unlike productions in the other arts, all television shows are born to destroy two other shows. Les Brown

Every time you think television has hit its lowest ebb, a new program comes along to make you wonder where you thought the ebb was. Art Buchwald

Television is more interesting than people. If it were not we should have people standing in the corner of our room. Alan Coren

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

If everything on television is, without exception, part of a low-calorie (or even no-calorie) diet, then what good is it complaining about the adverts? By their worthlessness, they at least help to make the programmes around them seem of a higher level. Jean Baudrillard

There is a middlebrow snobbery in America that praises everything on public television and disdains everything on the commercial networks as a blight. Henry Fairlie

We can put television in its proper light by supposing that Gutenberg’s great invention had been directed at printing only comic books. Robert M Hutchins

Much of what passes for quality on British television is no more than a reflection of the narrow elite which controls it and has always thought that its tastes were synonymous with quality. Rupert Murdoch

(Television) has spread the habit of instant reaction and stimulated the hope of instant results. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr

Television enables voters to know their leaders far better than they did when newspapers were the primary source of political information. Television is more pitiless than the press because the moving image is more revealing than the printed word. Arthur Schlesinger, Jr

I don’t like this reality television, I have to be honest…I think real people should not be on television. It’s for special people like us, people who have trained and studied to appear to be real. Garry Shandling

Television is simply automated daydreaming. Lee Loevinger

Anyone afraid of what he thinks television does to the world is probably just afraid of the world. Clive James

Reading, in contrast to sitting before the screen, is not a purely passive exercise. The child, particularly one who reads a book dealing with real life, has nothing before it but the hieroglyphics of the printed page. Imagination must do the rest; and imagination is called upon to do it. Not so the television screen. Here everything is spelled out for the viewer, visually, in motion, and in all three dimensions. No effort of imagination is called upon for its enjoyment. George F Kennan

Nothing is really real unless it happens on television. Daniel J Boorstin

Television was the most revolutionary event of the century. Its importance was in a class with the discovery of gunpowder and the invention of the printing press, which changed the human condition for centuries afterward. Russell Baker