Television/Quotes

"Sam: Is that ethical? It can't be ethical! Al: No, it's television."

- Quantum Leap, "Moments to Live"

""Whom the gods would destroy, they first give television.""

- Arthur C. Clarke

""Y'know, with this digital technology, the suckiness comes through with great clarity.""

- Mike Nelson, Mystery Science Theater 3000

""I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television.""

- Gore Vidal

""I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television.""

- E. B. White, Harper's Bazaar, 1938

""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

""The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter, but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining.""

- Neil Postman

""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

""Action sequences filmed in Confuse-O-Vision.""

- Joel Robinson, Mystery Science Theater 3000

"Calvin: It says here that "religion is the opiate of the masses." What do you suppose that means? Television set: (It means Karl Marx hadn't seen anything yet.)"

- Calvin and Hobbes

"Garfield: Television is only so much mindless drivel. Glossy adventures, sex and violence... Ain't it great?"

- Garfield

""You people sit there, day after day, night after night. You're all ages, colors, creeds. We're all you know. You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, eat like the tube, raise your children like the tube, even think like the tube. This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion! So turn off your television sets. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off in the middle of this sentence. Turn them off!""

- Howard Beale, Network

""Lemmie think. What did I learn in the real world? What's the one thing most likely to rot people's minds and reduce their brains to mashed potatoes? I remember now - television!""

- Bowser Koopa, Super Mario World

""Television is a medium because it is neither rare nor well done""

- Ernie Kovacs