Since television was invented, people have been pontificating about how the medium affects society. Is there too much violence on television? Too much sex? Does it encourage children to eat too much sugar or act out in antisocial ways? These questions have been part of an ongoing debate that will probably not be resolved any time soon. But what the pontificators do agree on is that television does have some influence on society. In the 1990s, the United Nations General Assembly wanted the world to recognize this influence and declared that November 21 is World Television Day—in the hopes that broadcasters will use their power for good and not evil. Whether or not that will actually happen remains to be seen, but these quotes tackle the influence of television—for better or for worse.
1. "Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek. No good can come of it."
–C.P. Scott
2. “The mere mention of Hollywood induces a condition in me like breakbone fever. It was a hideous and untenable place when I dwelt there, populated with few exceptions by Yahoos, and now that it has become the chief citadel of television, it's unspeakable.”
–S.J. Perelman
3. “Unless we get off our fat surpluses and recognize that television in the main is being used to distract, delude, amuse, and insulate us, then television, and those who finance it, those who look at it, and those who work at it, may see a totally different picture too late."
–Edward R. Murrow
4. “When television is bad, nothing is worse. I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air…and keep your eyes glued to that set until the station signs off. I can assure you that you will observe a vast wasteland.”
–Newton Minow
5. “It seems to me that television is exactly like a gun. Your enjoyment of it is determined by which end of it you're on.”
–Alfred Hitchcock
6. “I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
–Groucho Marx
7. “When I got my first television set, I stopped caring so much about having close relationships.”
–Andy Warhol
8. “Color television! Bah, I won't believe it until I see it in black and white.”
–Samuel Goldwyn
9. “What is a television apparatus to man, who has only to shut his eyes to see the most inaccessible regions of the seen and the never seen, who has only to imagine in order to pierce through walls and cause all the planetary Baghdads of his dreams to rise from the dust.”
–Salvador Dali
10. “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
Sources:
Bartlett, John. (2002). Bartlett's Familiar Quotations: A Collection of Passages, Phrases, and Proverbs Traced to Their Sources in Ancient and Modern Literature. Little, Brown and Company.
Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press.
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