text:
Television

Television (TV) is a telecommunication medium used for transmitting moving images and sound. Television can transmit images that are monochrome (black-and-white), in color, or in three dimensions. Television is an iconic mass medium, serving as a conduit for entertainment, advertising and news.

A

 * The role of television is the illusion of company, noise. I call it the fifth wall and the second window: the window of illusion.
 * Mumia Abu-Jamal "I spend my days preparing for life, not for death" The Guardian, 25 October 2007

 * The viewer of television, the listener to radio, the reader of magazines, is presented with a whole complex of elements—all the way from ingenious rhetoric to carefully selected data and statistics—to make it easy for him to “make up his own mind” with the minimum of difficulty and effort. But the packaging is often done so effectively that the viewer, listener, or reader does not make up his own mind at all. Instead, he inserts a packaged opinion into his mind, somewhat like inserting a cassette into a cassette player. He then pushes a button and “plays back” the opinion whenever it seems appropriate to do so. He has performed acceptably without having had to think.
 * Mortimer Adler, How to Read a Book (1940), p. 4

 * Television has become the mirror of our culture, and if we are not in it, we feel that we must not exist.
 * Kathleen Alcalá "The Madonna in Cyberspace" (2000) in The Desert Remembers My Name: On Family and Writing (2007)

 * Television dreams of tomorrow, we're not the ones who're meant to follow. For that's enough to argue.
 * Billie Joe Armstrong, "American Idiot", American Idiot (2004), California: Reprise Records

 * The rockets that have made spaceflight possible are an advance that, more than any other technological victory of the twentieth century, was grounded in science fiction… . One thing that no science fiction writer visualized, however, as far as I know, was that the landings on the Moon would be watched by people on Earth by way of television.
 * Isaac Asimov, in Asimov on Physics (1976), 35. Also in Isaac Asimov’s Book of Science and Nature Quotations (1988), 307.

 * What the mass media offers is not popular art, but entertainment which is intended to be consumed like food, forgotten, and replaced by a new dish. This is bad for everyone; the majority lose all genuine taste of their own, and the minority become cultural snobs.
 * W. H. Auden, "The Poet & The City", p. 83. The Dyer's Hand, and Other Essays (1962)

B

 * The luminous screen in the home carries fantastic authority. Viewers everywhere tend to accept it as a window on the world... It has tended to displace or overwhelm other influences such as newspapers, school, church, grandpa, grandma. It has become the definer and transmitter of society's values.
 * Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes On a Modern Potentate (Oxford University Press, 1978), ISBN 0-19-502614-4, p. 75

If television has assumed this role, it is not the result of a struggle between good guys and bad guys. If it were, it would be easy to solve, like problems in televisionland. ... The sponsor who thinks in terms of maximizing sales and profits is doing his duty. ... The advertising agency executive who recommends programs and time-slots in terms of audience size and demographic targets is likewise doing his job... The network sales executive who favors programs that advertising agencies will recommend to sponsors is performing his task. ... The problem—the folly—is not in any of these, but in a system that has made the center of national attention a market item, for sale at auction prices. The system has put the leadership of our society on the auction block.
 * Bread and circuses—to some observers, welfare and television seemed modern equivalents, pacifiers of empire, protectors of power and privilege.
 * Erik Barnouw, The Sponsor: Notes On a Modern Potentate (Oxford University Press, 1978), ISBN 0-19-502614-4, p. 171-172

 * For intellectual authority, the appropriate version of Descartes's cogito would be today: I am talked about, therefore I am.
 * Zygmunt Bauman, The Individualised Society (2001)

 * I like to watch.
 * Repeated lines by "Chance, the gardner" in Being There (1979), initially referring simply to his lifelong habit of watching television.

 * My God, how can you stand such things, children? They say, "Mom, don't you know it is only television, it is not real."
 * Dr. Lauretta Bender Testimony of Dr. Lauretta Bender Testimony of Dr. Lauretta Bender, senior psychiatrist, Bellevue hospital, New York N.Y.
 * Economic problems, notably low productivity and massive underemployment, meant that per capita GNP was very low compared to the West. Combined with the high rate of military expenditure, these economic problems limited the funds available for social investment and consumer spending. Unlike in the West, economic growth in the Soviet bloc did not lead to personal prosperity, and certainly not by the conspicuous standards of the West. This limitation increasingly compromised popular support for the system, especially because television made the public notably in East Germany, thanks to the heavy exposure to West German television, aware of better times elsewhere. Furthermore, viewers in northern Estonia could watch Finnish television. Television ‘soaps’, soap-operas of family life, proved particularly seductive as they apparently showed how families lived in the West. This awareness of a better life elsewhere encouraged the attempt in Eastern Europe not only to provide consumer goods but also to block Western television transmissions.
 * Jeremy Black, The Cold War: A Military History (2015)

 * First radio, then television, have assaulted and overturned the privacy of the home, the real American privacy, which permitted the development of a higher and more independent life within democratic society.
 * Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 58

 * It is not so much the low quality of the fare provided that is troubling. It is much more the difficulty of imagining any order of taste, any way of life with pleasures and learning that naturally fit the lives of the family’s members, keeping itself distinct from the popular culture and resisting the visions of what is admirable and interesting with which they are bombarded.
 * Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind (New York: 1988), p. 59

 * Do you realize if it weren't for Edison we'd be watching TV by candlelight?
 * Al Boliska, as cited in: Stuart Kantor (2004) Beer, Boxers, Batteries, And Bodily Noises. p. 39

 * Television enjoys a de facto monopoly on what goes into the heads of a significant part of the population and what they think.
 * Pierre Bourdieu (1998: 18); as cited in: Helen Kelly-Holmes (2001) Minority Language Broadcasting: Breton and Irish. p. 8

 * Television gives you the dates of Napoleon, but not who he was.
 * Ray Bradbury, "Ray Bradbury: Fahrenheit 451 Misinterpreted", Amy E. Boyle Johnston, LA Weekly, Wednesday, May 30, 2007.

 * They become lullabies. They’re ‘tell-me-again-Daddy’ stories. That’s all television is: ‘Tell me again, Daddy, about the good guy and the bad guy and the strong guy and Kung Fu and Flash Gordon'.
 * Marlon Brando in “Mondo Brando: The Method of His Madness”, by Chris Hodenfield, Rolling Stone, (May 20, 1976).

 * We're aware of the scale of the planet, so we don't accept that our own circumscribed horizons constitute reality. Much more real is what's relayed to us by the TV.
 * John Brunner, Stand on Zanzibar (1968), continuity (17) "Timescales"

C

 * Folks sit before television, watching the funny, goofy, unreal world where everybody plays at being sexy and naked, even when they’re not.
 * Jack Cady, The Night We Buried Road Dog (originally published in The Magazine of Fantasy & Science Fiction, January 1993; reprinted in The Year's Best Science Fiction, volume 11, edited by Gardner Dozois).

 * You don't have to concentrate. You don't have to react. You don't have to remember. You don't miss your brain because you don't need it. Your heart and liver and lungs continue to function normally. Apart from that, all is peace and quiet. You are in the poor man's nirvana.
 * Raymond Chandler on watching television, quoted in Tom Hiney, Raymond Chandler, Chatto & Windus, London, 1997, p. 191.

 * You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to believe that the tube is reality and your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you: you dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you 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!
 * Paddy Chayefsky, screenwriter, Network  (1976)

 * Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park. Television is a circus, a carnival, a traveling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, sideshow freaks, lion tamers, and football players. We're in the boredom-killing business. So if you want the Truth, go to God! Go to your gurus. Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever gonna find any real truth. But, man, you're never gonna get any truth from us. We'll tell you anything you wanna hear. We lie like hell. We'll tell you that, uh, Kojak always gets the killer and that nobody ever gets cancer at Archie Bunker's house. And no matter how much trouble the hero is in, don't worry. Just look at your watch. At the end of the hour, he's gonna win. We'll tell you any shit you want to hear. We deal in illusions, man. None of it is true! But you people sit there day after day, night after night, 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 that the tube is reality and that your own lives are unreal. You do whatever the tube tells you. You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube. You 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 now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off. Turn them off right in the middle of this sentence I am speaking to you now. Turn them off!
 * Paddy Chayefsky, screenwriter, Network  (1976)

 * I’d park myself a few inches from the RCA color television set we had. I was so close, I could feel the static electricity of the screen tugging at the peach fuzz on my face and smell the wonderful aroma of electrically heated dust coming from the vents of that lustrous wooden console. No matter how many times my mother yelled, “Kevin! Move back before you go blind!” I’d still feel myself powerfully drawn into that world, and the worn-out seats of my Lee jeans bore witness to the pull I was powerless to resist.
 * Kevin Clash, puppeteer who plays Elmo on Sesame Street, on his childhood. Published in 2006 as part of My Life as a Furry Red Monster.

 * My father ... watched very little TV, because once Conscious, every commercial, every program must be strip-mined for its deeper meaning, until it lays bare its role in this sinister American plot.
 * Ta-Nehisi Coates, The Beautiful Struggle: A Memoir (2008), p. 54

 * Although excessive screen time is often frowned upon, language experts say that watching shows in a foreign language -- if done with near obsession -- can help someone learn that language. "These stories are hugely common," said Melissa Baese-Berk, associate professor of linguistics and director of the Second Language Acquisition and Teaching program at the University of Oregon. She points to a New York Times story about professional baseball players from Latin America who learned English by watching "Friends" with Spanish subtitles. But they didn't just watch "Friends"; they watched it over and over again. Philadelphia Phillies shortstop Freddy Galvis told the Times that he had watched every episode of the 10-season show at least five times. Stephen Snyder, dean of language schools at Middlebury College in Vermont, said this story sounds familiar to him. "Our Japanese classes are full of Chinese students and American students who grew up watching Japanese anime, and without having any formal training in Japanese, their comprehension is quite reasonable," he said. "It's a transnational phenomenon, and it makes sense." Baese-Berk says science supports what these young people have experienced. Studies show that it's best to acquire a language through both active and passive learning, and watching shows in a foreign language involves both. Trying to figure out a word that a character in a telenovela is saying would be an example of active learning, and admiring the character's outfit while hearing Spanish in the background would be an example of passive learning, she said.
 * Elizabeth Cohen, “The television trick to learning a new language”, CNN, (last updated March 19, 2018).

 * Television is for appearing on, not looking at.
 * Noël Coward in Barry Day (2007), The Letters of Noël Coward (illustrated ed.), Alfred A. Knopf, p. 585

D

 * IT ROTS THE SENSES IN THE HEAD! IT KILLS IMAGINATION DEAD! IT CLOGS AND CLUTTERS UP THE MIND! IT MAKES A CHILD SO DULL AND BLIND HE CAN NO LONGER UNDERSTAND A FANTASY, A FAIRYLAND! HIS BRAIN BECOMES AS SOFT AS CHEESE! HIS POWERS OF THINKING RUST AND FREEZE! HE CANNOT THINK–HE ONLY SEES!
 * Roald Dahl, Charlie and the Chocolate Factory (1964), p. 139

 * An EEG of a person watching TV shows that after about half an hour the brain decides that nothing is happening, and it goes into a hypnoidal twilight state, emitting alpha waves. This is because there is such little eye motion.
 * Philip K. Dick, in "How To Build A Universe That Doesn't Fall Apart Two Days Later" (1978)

E

 * A democratic civilization will save itself only if it makes the language of the image into a stimulus for critical reflection — not an invitation for hypnosis.
 * Umberto Eco, in "Can Television Teach?" in Screen Education 31 (1979), p. 12

 * It 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, New York Post (Sept 22, 1963)

 * I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad. The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.
 * Harlan Ellison Interview in 1979, quoted in The Online Copywriter's Handbook (2002) by Robert W. Bly, p. 19

 * We are in the process of seeing the fulfillment of Edgar Allen Poe's prophecy in which the painter, impassioned by his mistress-model and also by his art, "did not want to see that the colors he spread on his canvas were taken from the cheeks of the woman seated beside him. And when several weeks had passed, and very little remained to be done, nothing but a stroke on the mouth and a glaze over the eye, the mistress’s spirit still flickered like the flame at the base of a lamp. Then he put on the final touch, put the glaze in place, and for a moment the painter stood in ecstasy before the work he had finished. But a moment later, he was struck with panic, and shouting with a piercing voice: ‘It is truly Life itself,’ he suddenly turned around to look at his mistress. She was dead." Nothing ever constrains us to face what is dying when we see it so alive in our images.
 * Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word (1981), J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 208

 * The word, although prevalent in our day, has lost its reasoning value, and has value only as an accessory to images. In turn, the word actually evokes images. But it does not evoke the direct images related to my personal experience. Rather, it calls up images from the newspaper or television. The key words in our modern vocabulary ... are stripped of all rational content, so they evoke only visions that whisk us away to some enchanted universe. Saying "fascism," "progress," "science," or "justice" does not suggest any idea or produce any reflection. It only causes a fanfare of images to explode within us: a sort of fireworks of visual commonplaces, which link up very precisely with each other. These related images provide me with practical content: a common truth that is especially easy to swallow because the ready-made images that showed it to me had been digested in advance.
 * Jacques Ellul, The Humiliation of the Word (1981), J. Hanks, trans. (1985), p. 210

F

 * TV, the worst thing that had happened to the twentieth century. After the atom bomb and overpopulation, of course.
 * Philip José Farmer, The Dark Design (1977), Chapter 30

 * The young watch television twenty-four hours a day, they don't read and they rarely listen. This incessant bombardment of images has developed a hypertrophied eye condition that's turning them into a race of mutants.
 * Federico Fellini, in I'm a Born Liar: A Fellini Lexicon (2003), "Younger Generation"

 * “Incredibly enough, reality TV has just gotten worse.” “Is that possible? I asked. “Wasn’t Celebrity Trainee Pathologist the pits?” I thought for a moment. “Actually, Whose Life Support Do We Switch Off? was worse. Or maybe Sell Your Granny. Wow, the choice these days makes it also tricky to decide. Bowden laughed. “I’ll agree that Granny lowered the bar for distasteful program makers everywhere, but RTA-TV, never one to shrink from a challenge, has devised Samaritan Kidney Swap. Ten renal-failure patients take turns trying to convince a tissue-typed donor—and the voting viewers—which one should have his spare kidney.” I groaned. Reality TV was to me the worst form of entertainment—the modern equivalent of paying sixpence to watch lunatics howling at the wall down at the local madhouse.
 * Jasper Fforde, First Among Sequels (2007), ISBN 978-0-670-03871-8 pp. 26-27

 * Television is just another appliance- It's just a toaster with pictures.
 * Mark S. Fowler, FCC Chairman, from an interview with Reason Magazine, May 1982

Where imagination is sucked out of children by a cathode ray nipple. T.V. is the only wet nurse that would create a cripple
 * Television, the drug of the Nation, Breeding ignorance and feeding radiation.
 * Michael Franti,Television drug of the nation, from Hypocrisy is the Greatest Luxury, by Disposable Heroes of Hiphoprisy, 1991

 * 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, as quoted in A Companion to Television, Wasko, Janet (2005) Blackwell Publishing. Page 9.

H

 * I know very well the sorts of pressures you're under in television. I don't work in television anymore myself, but I'm constantly hearing from colleagues who present scripts to networks and are told, "The script is too complex. You have to keep it simple because the audience is dumb. You can make more money for the advertisers that way."
 * Michael Haneke as interviewed by Richard Porton, "Collective Guilt and Individual Responsibility: An Interview with Michael Haneke," Cineaste, Vol. 31, No. 1 (Winter 2005), pp. 50-51

 * Our perception of the truth is determined by what appears on the screen. If an event is never broadcast, it somehow never happened. The electronic image is the word of God. The corporate state controls most of what is seen and heard on television, what ideas and events can be discussed in the mainstream media and what orthodoxies, including neoliberalism and the war industry, must never be questioned. We suffer an intellectual tyranny as pervasive as that imposed by fascism and communism.
 * Chris Hedges, "Donald Trump’s Greatest Allies Are the Liberal Elites", Truthdig, March 5, 2017

 * Television has done much for psychiatry by spreading information about it, as well as contributing to the need for it.
 * Alfred Hitchcock, Alfred Hitchcock Presents. 1960

 * Like the invention of indoor plumbing. It didn’t change people’s habits. It just kept them inside the house.
 * Alfred Hitchcock, NY Journal-American 25 Aug. 1965

 * One of television’s great contributions is that it brought murder back into the home, where it belongs.
 * Alfred Hitchcock, National Observer 15 Aug. 1966

 * 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, National Observer 15 Aug. 1966

 * Watching t.v. doesn't have much of a payoff.
 * Maxine Hong Kingston To Be the Poet (2002) p 57

 * In the days before machinery men and women who wanted to amuse themselves were compelled, in their humble way, to be artists. Now they sit still and permit professionals to entertain them by the aid of machinery. It is difficult to believe that general artistic culture can flourish in this atmosphere of passivity.
 * Aldous Huxley, The Doors of Perception (1954)

J

 * News is not at all an easy thing to do on television. A good many of the main news items are not easily made visual — therefore we have the problem of giving news with the same standards that the corporation has built up in sound.
 * Sir Ian Jacob, BBC director General, c. July 1954
 * "BBC launches daily TV news", BBC.co.uk; on the launch of the televised BBC News on 5 July 1954

 * Television is simultaneously blamed, often by the same people, for worsening the world and for being powerless to change it.
 * Clive James, introduction to Glued to the Box

 * When you're young, you look at television and think, There's a conspiracy. The networks have conspired to dumb us down. But when you get a little older, you realize that's not true. The networks are in business to give people exactly what they want. That's a far more depressing thought. Conspiracy is optimistic! You can shoot the bastards! We can have a revolution! But the networks are really in business to give people what they want. It's the truth.
 * Steve Jobs, Interview in WIRED magazine (February 1996)

 * On the big screen they showed us a sun But not as bright in life as the real one It's never quite the same as the real one.
 * Elton John "Grey Seal" from the album Goodbye Yellow Brick Road

 * As I sat in my office last evening, waiting to speak, I thought of the many times each week when television brings the war into the American home. No one can say exactly what effect those vivid scenes have on American opinion. Historians must only guess at the effect that television would have had during earlier conflicts on the future of this Nation during the Korean war, for example, at that time when our forces were pushed back there to Pusan or World War II, the Battle of the Bulge, or when our men were slugging it our in Europe or when most of our Air Force was shot down that day in June 1942 off Australia.
 * Lyndon Johnson, "Address to the National Association of Broadcasters", (April, 1 1968); as qtd. in Michael Mandelbaum, “Vietnam: The Television War”, Daedalus, Vol. 111, No. 4, Print Culture and Video Culture (Fall, 1982), p. 157.

 * When the war finally started, we were ready. On January 16, 1991, CNN anchor Bernard Shaw reported to the world, “The skies over Baghdad have been illuminated . . .” As predicted, Iraqi power and communications systems were destroyed by stealth fighter jets and cruise missiles. Every media company based in Baghdad—except CNN—lost power and transmission capabilities. Only CNN broadcast live to hundreds of millions of people worldwide. All channels turned to us for exclusive coverage; there was no place else. Back then CNN was the only global 24/7 news channel. That live coverage of war—the first time it had been televised worldwide—transformed the media landscape. CNN became required viewing for informed citizens and heads of state, the one truly global news source. That has changed now, with multiple cable networks and news breaking on social media. But without the investment in journalism from visionary owners such as Turner, today’s networks focus more on commentary than newsgathering.
 * Tom Johnson, “Desert Storm: The first war televised live around the world (and around the clock)”, Atlanta Magazine, (March 18, 2015).

 * We have found that television is such a huge part of baby boomers' DNA that it makes sense that so much of America's pop culture jargon comes from TV.
 * Larry W. Jones, TV Land president

K

 * “Come on,” I said, feeling tired and angry. “You don’t really think that. Nobody thinks that any more, do they? How can the public image be so far off from the reality? Does everybody pay more attention to damn television than to real life?”
 * Kenn Kaufman, Kingbird Highway (1997), Chapter 10, To the Promised Landfill

 * This new request is for additional radio and television to Latin America and Southeast Asia. These tools are particularly effective and essential in the cities and villages of those great continents as a means of reaching millions of uncertain peoples to tell them of our interest in their fight for freedom. In Latin America, we are proposing to increase our Spanish and Portuguese broadcasts to a total of 154 hours a week, compared to 42 hours today, none of which is in Portuguese, the language of about one-third of the people of South America. The Soviets, Red Chinese and satellites already broadcast into Latin America more than 134 hours a week in Spanish and Portuguese. Communist China alone does more public information broadcasting in our own hemisphere than we do. Moreover, powerful propaganda broadcasts from Havana now are heard throughout Latin America, encouraging new revolutions in several countries. Similarly, in Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, and Thailand, we must communicate our determination and support to those upon whom our hopes for resisting the communist tide in that continent ultimately depend. Our interest is in the truth.
 * John F. Kennedy, Special Message to the Congress on Urgent National Needs, (25 May 1961)

L

 * “Tee Vee is a disease.” “No,” said Alice, laughing. “That’s ‘T.B.’ T.V. isn't a disease. It’s the most wonderful thing. It’s a great box which sits in the parlor at the center of attention; although it clashes with the rest of the furniture and decor. It shows beautiful colored pictures. People sit and look at it all day and night while it tells people what they should think. And what is beautiful. And what is ugly. It is such a wonderful thing that people watch it until they no longer remember how to communicate with each other, and they don’t know how to read anymore, and they lose all their ambition, and they grow fat and all of their muscles stop working. “So you see, it’s not a disease at all. It’s just the most marvelous invention!”
 * Tobin Larson, Alice’s Adventures in the Underground Railroad in Fantastic Alice (1995 trade paperback edition edited by Margaret Weis), p. 155

 * If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there'd be peace.
 * John Lennon, as quoted in Guitar Player (1 August 2004), and in "Pax Patter" at ABC (Australian Broadcasting Corporation)

 * The new values transmitters are the television producers, the movie moguls, the fashion advertisers, the gangsta rappers, and a host of other players within the electronic media-cultural complex. ... These trend-setters exert an extremely powerful hold on our culture and our children in particular, and they often have had little or no sense of responsibility for the harmful values they are purveying.
 * Joe Lieberman, In a lecture at the University of Notre Dame, Awake! magazine, April 8, 2000; "Are Morals Worse Than Before?"

 * The culture is unchallenged as the standard setter, and the child’s sense of right and wrong and his priorities in life are shaped primarily by what he learns from the television, the movie screen and the CD player.
 * Joe Lieberman, In a lecture at the University of Notre Dame, Awake! magazine, April 8, 2000; "Are Morals Worse Than Before?"

M

 * Television encourages separation: people from community, people from each other, people from themselves, creating more buying units and discouraging organized opposition to the system. It creates a surrogate community: Itself. It becomes everyone's intimate advisor, teacher and guide to appropriate behavior and awareness. Thereby, it becomes its own feedback system, furthering its own growth and accelerating the transformation of everything and everyone into artificial form. This enables a handful of people to obtain a unique degree of power.
 * Jerry Mander, Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television (1978), p. 133

 * I find television very educational. Every time someone switches it on I go into another room and read a good book.
 * Groucho Marx, as quoted in Halliwell's Filmgoer's Companion (1984) by Leslie Halliwell

 * Television is by nature the dominator drug par excellence. Control of content, uniformity of content, repeatability of content make it inevitably a tool of coersion, brainwashing, and manipulation.
 * Terence McKenna, Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge (1992)

 * Thanks to television, for the first time the young are seeing history made before it is censored by their elders.
 * Margaret Mead, as quoted by Robert P. Doyle (1993) Banned Books Week '93: celebrating the freedom to read. American Library Association. p. 62

 * Television was the Cold War intellectuals' nightmare, a machine for bringing kitsch and commercialism directly into the home. But it was also the way out of Wertham's trap. By exposing people to an endless stream of advertising, television taught them to take nothing at face value, to read everything ironically.
 * Louis Menand, "The Horror", The New Yorker, (March 24, 2008)

 * I invite you to sit down in front of your television set when your station goes on the air and stay there without a book, magazine, newspaper, profit and-loss sheet or rating book to distract you—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 N. Minow, FCC Chairman, May 9, 1961 ; republished by Minow in Equal Time (1964), p. 52.

 * Hollywood, television and film is not my prime area of interest. Because I would never have any control, working in those areas. It’s nice to get the money from a Hollywood project, but whatever they do with it, it would be their piece of work, and not mine.
 * Alan Moore, De Abaitua interview (1998)

 * Interviewer: Frank Hunt asks: What were the most important lessons you took away (as a writer and producer) from your time working on Star Trek?
 * Moore: That it's all about the characters and that you really have to be willing to dig into the characters and make it about the people and understand them. That means sitting in rooms for hours on end and arguing about who these people really are. It's about trying to challenge the characters and challenge yourself. It's really the lifeblood of television. It's what it’s all about. People tune into these shows again and again not for the plot of the week and not because they want to be wowed by visual effects. They tune into the show because they fall in love with the characters. They fall in love with Kirk and Spock and Sisko and Janeway and Picard and Data. They want to see those people again. So it's all about the characters, and that's the most important thing I learned at Trek.
 * Ronald D. Moore "You Ask The Q's, Ronald D. Moore Answers, Part 2", StarTrek.com, (Apr 3, 2013).

N

 * Dr. King ... felt it was important that children of all races see an African American female appearing on television as an equal.
 * Nichelle Nichols as quoted in "Star Trek’s Nichelle Nichols On Uhura’s Groundbreaking Kiss With Captain Kirk"

 * Television may represent a threat to our culture analogous to the threat of atomic weapons to our civilization.
 * Reinhold Niebuhr, The Irony of American History (1952), p. 59

 * My personal theory, which I’ve never bothered to research academically, is that television is what straightens out the narrative of Hollywood films for thirty-odd years, and it’s when VHS comes along that it starts to get freed up again. Because what happens in the television era is, TV is the big ancillary market, linear television becomes the way Hollywood films are paid for, and so they demand a narrative that you can follow even as the world’s distractions come upon you. So, the pizza deliveryman comes, you’re watching a film at home in 1975, you go and pay for the pizza, you sit back down. You don’t just pick up right where you left off, so you can’t have missed some fundamental thing, and the more linear the story, the better. Post-1982 or ’83-ish, you hit pause, you go pay for the pizza and you hit play again – you don’t miss anything. I think Disney were the first studio to realise that home video changed the nature of the films they were putting out. They weren’t doing it in a narrative sense, but they started layering the animation more and more, because they knew that kids would watch these films again and again. So, there’s also a visual density that comes in right about then – at the same time, Ridley Scott was making Blade Runner and stuffing the frame with all these different things; there’s too much to take in on one viewing.
 * Christopher Nolan, as quoted in Christopher Nolan: a showman's odyssey, by James Bell, 14 February 2024, Sight and Sound magazine, British Film Institute.

P

 * I haven't had a TV in 10 years, and I really don't miss it. 'Cause it's always so much more fun to be with people than it ever was to be with a television.
 * Chuck Palahniuk, San Francisco Bay Guardian, October 30, 2002

 * People's imagination has been changed a lot by television.
 * Grace Paley 1980 interview in Conversations with Grace Paley (1997)

 * There were a grand total of fifty-five licensed television sets when Nehru died in 1964, about a hundred thousand when Indira Gandhi declared emergency in 1975, a little over two million when the Asian Games came to Delhi in 1982, thirty-four million families owned a TV set when Manmohan Singh opened up the economy in 1991 and when Narendra Modi was sworn in as Prime Minister in 2014, over 60 per cent of the 250 million homes in India had a television set.

 * Television has changed the American child from an irresistible force into an immovable object.
 * Laurence J. Peter, Peter's Quotations: Ideas for Our Time (1977), ISBN 0-688-03217-6, p. 324

 * Unless and until there is unmistakable proof to the contrary, the presumption must be that television is and will be a main factor in influencing the values and moral standards of our society.
 * Pilkington Report, Great Britain, Committee on Broadcasting (1960), Report (Command paper 1753) (1962), chapter 3, p. 15, 19.

 * Television does not, and cannot, merely reflect the moral standards of society. It must affect them, either by changing or by reinforcing them.
 * Pilkington Report, Great Britain, Committee on Broadcasting (1960), Report (Command paper 1753) (1962), chapter 3, p. 15, 19.

 * Those who say they give the public what it wants begin by underestimating public taste, and end by debauching it.
 * Pilkington Report, quoting an unknown source. Great Britain, Committee on Broadcasting, 1960, Report (Command paper 1753) (1962), chapter 3, p. 17.

R

 * Niles Talbot: Fucking guys on TV, what do they know? Let me tell you something. If they put executions on TV it would be the fucking highest-rated show of all time. It'd be Neilsens through the roof. The other networks would start killing people just to compete. Pretty soon, Geraldo Rivera would be pulling that switch.
 * Niles Talbot as interpreted by William Sadler in "The Man Who Was Death", Tales from the Crypt, (June 10, 1989), written by Robert Reneau and Walter Hill; based on "The Man Who Was Death" by Gardner Fox in The Crypt of Terror #17, (April/May 1950)

 * To get a prime time show - network show - on the air and to keep it there, you must attract and hold a minimum of 18 million people every week. You have to do that in order to move people away from Gomer Pyle, Bonanza, Beverly Hill Billies and so on. And we tried to do this with entertainment, action, adventure, conflict and so on. But once we got on the air, and within the limits of those accident ratio limits, we did not accept the myth, that the television audience has an infantile mind. We had an idea, and we had a premise, and we still believe that. As a matter of fact we decided to risk the whole show on that premise. We believed that the often ridiculed mass audience is sick of this world's petty nationalism and all its old ways and old hatreds, and that people are not only willing but anxious to think beyond most petty beliefs that have for so long kept mankind divided. So you see that the formula, the magic ingredient that many people keep seeking and many of them keep missing is really not in Star Trek. It is in the audience. There is an intelligent life form out on the other side of that television too.
 * Gene Roddenberry as quoted in The Star Trek Philosophy

 * Television. An advanced technical method of stopping people from making their own entertainment.
 * Leonard Rossiter, English comic actor. ‘...To Rossiter’, The Devil’s Bedside Book, Hamlyn paperbacks (1980) p. 46

S

 * The revolution will not be televised. The Revolution will be no rerun, brothers. The Revolution — will be live.
 * Gil Scott-Heron, The Revolution Will Not Be Televised, 1971

 * We’ve left the age of Difficult Men — to borrow the title of Brett Martin’s 2013 book about Sopranos–Mad Men–Breaking Bad–style drama — and entered an age of Difficult Shows. You're the Worst, Orange Is the New Black, Lady Dynamite, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, Master of None, The Carmichael Show, Jane the Virgin, Crazy Ex Girlfriend, Baskets, Veep, Silicon Valley|, Archer, Catastrophe, Mom, Black-ish, Fresh Off the Boat — there’s infinitely more tonal and aesthetic variety in these mostly-funny-but-not-always comedies than in any comparable list of dramas you could put together.
 * Most dramas are plot-driven, stringing audiences from revelation to revelation, whereas comedies are character-driven. Game of Thrones, Empire, The Americans, Mr. Robot, Homeland, House of Cards, and the Shondaland shows (How to Get Away With Murder, Scandal, Grey’s [Anatomy]) are all about their twists, and they’re strategic about giving characters pretty basic motivations, such as a thirst for power, money, or validation. But comedies like Girls, Transparent, BoJack Horseman, and Catastrophe focus on unpacking their characters’ demented psychology, and they often detour into narrative cul-de-sacs...
 * Matt Zoller Seitz, “How Comedy Usurped Drama As the TV Genre of Our Time”, Vulture, (June 13, 2016).

 * Television’s greatest weakness is its reluctance to take positions. Historically, during times of greatest stress, during periods of greatest controversy, the mass media are the first to be attacked, the first to be muzzled, and also unhappily-historically and traditionally-the first to fold up their tent and look the other way.
 * Rod Serling, March 1965 speech to United States State Department, Washington D.C.; as quoted by Tony Albarella in "Rod Serling attempts to run the conventional Western out of town, but finds he must go it a “Loner.”", Rodserling.com, (Dec. 10th, 2003)

 * How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?
 * Rod Serling, Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval (October 1997), American Masters (PBS: Thirteen/WNET)

 * On the Twilight Zone I knew I could get away with having Martians say things Republicans and Democrats couldn't.
 * Rod Serling, Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval (October 1997), American Masters

 * For the first time in television a writer will have the opportunity to let his imagination take him where ever he wants to. The sky is no longer the limit.
 * Rod Serling in Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval (October 1997), American Masters

 * My favourite show is The Sopranos. Movies would never have let [David Chase] do that ending. There would have been repercussions. They would have stopped promoting it a certain way and would have said ‘hmm, we tested it and it’s not doing so well, half the audience hates it’, that kind of stuff. But on TV everybody watched it. They might have hated it, but they all watched it and it was up to Chase to decide the ending. He had that freedom.
 * M. Night Shyamalan as interviewed in "The Sixth Sense director once hailed as Spielberg’s heir on turning to TV to revive his career"

 * Watching violence in movies or in TV programs stimulates the spectators to imitate what they see much more than if seen live or on TV news. In movies, violence is filmed with perfect illumination, spectacular scenery, and in slow motion, making it even romantic. However, in the news, the public has a much better perception of how horrible violence can be, and it is used with objectives that do not exist in the movies.
 * Steven Spielberg, in an interview by the Brazilian magazine Veja (1993).

 * There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. If we wish to make it louder, we will bring up the volume. If we wish to make it softer, we will tune it to a whisper. We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical. We can roll the image, make it flutter. We can change the focus to a soft blur or sharpen it to crystal clarity. For the next hour, sit quietly and we will control all that you see and hear. We repeat: there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind to The Outer Limits.
 * The Outer Limits (1963 TV series) (Opening narration) created by Leslie Stevens

T

 * I think TV is sometimes more creatively satisfying because, you know, every week, like say on Samurai Jack, we were able to do something new and different. We really challenged ourselves. Oh, this week, we're going to fight zombies, and so, we'll do a real scary one. The next week, we're going to do a rave, and so we'll do it not as scary and just do more focusing on the dancing and the music. So, that was really fun creatively, but then the speed makes you suffer, because we have to go so fast. We have limited budgets, and so, we just go as fast as we can. Everything that we do is really our first instinct.
 * Genndy Tartakovsky, "Interview: Genndy Tartakovsky Talks 'Hotel Transylvania 2,' Evolving Animation Tech And The Possibility Of Returning To TV" Laura Rosenfeld, Tech Times, (23 September 2015)

 * Watching television is the favorite leisure activity or rather nonactivity for millions of people around the world. The average American, by the time he is sixty years old, will have spent fifteen years staring at the TV screen. In many other countries the figures are similar. Many people find watching TV “relaxing.” Observe yourself closely and you will find that the longer the screen remains the focus of your attention, the more your thought activity becomes suspended, and for long periods you are watching the talk show, game show, sitcom, or even commercials with almost no thought being generated by your mind. Not only do you not remember your problems anymore, but you become temporarily free of yourself – and what could be more relaxing than that?  So does TV watching create inner space? Does it cause you to be present? Unfortunately, it does not. Although for long periods your mind may not be generating any thoughts, it has linked into the thought activity of the television show. It has linked up with the TV version of the collective mind, and is thinking its thoughts. Your mind is inactive only in the sense that it is not producing thoughts. It is, however, continuously absorbing thoughts and images that come through the TV screen. This induces a trancelike passive state of heightened susceptibility, not unlike hypnosis.
 * Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)

 * That is why it lends itself to manipulation of “public opinion,” as politicians and special interest groups as well as advertisers know and will pay millions of dollars to catch you in that state of receptive unawareness. They want their thoughts to become your thoughts, and usually they succeed. So when watching television, the tendency is for you to fall below thought, not rise above it. Television has this in common with alcohol and certain other drugs. While it provides some relief from your mind, you again pay a high price: loss of consciousness. Like those drugs, it too has a strong addictive quality. You reach for the remote control to switch off and instead find yourself going through all the channels. Half an hour or an hour later, you are still watching, still going through the channels. The off button is the only one your finger seems unable to press. You are still watching, usually not because anything of interest has caught your attention, but precisely because there is nothing of interest to watch. Once you are hooked, the more trivial, the more meaningless, it is, the more addictive it becomes. p. 139
 * Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)

 * Frequent and prolonged TV watching not only makes you unconscious, it also induces passivity and drains you of energy. Therefore, rather than watching at random, choose the programs you want to see. Whenever you remember to do so, feel the aliveness inside your body as you watch. Alternatively, be aware of your breathing from time to time. Look away from the screen at regular intervals so that it does not completely take possession of your visual sense. Don't turn up the volume any higher than necessary so that the TV doesn't overwhelm you on the auditory level. Use the mute button during commercials. Make sure you don't go to sleep immediately after switching off the set or, even worse, fall asleep with the set still on. p. 141
 * Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life’s Purpose (2005)

V

 * The battle for the mind of North America will be fought in the video arena — the videodrome. The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye. Therefore the television screen is part of the physical structure of the brain. Therefore whatever appears on the television screen emerges as raw experience for those who watch it. Therefore television is reality, and reality is less than television.
 * Professor Brian O'Blivion, Videodrome

 * What television does is rent us friends and relatives who are quite satisfactory. The child watching TV loves these people, you know -- they're in color, and they're talking to the child. Why wouldn't a child relate to these people? And you know, if you can't sleep at 3 o'clock in the morning, you can turn on a switch, and there are your friends and relatives, and they obviously like you. And they're charming. Who wouldn't want Peter Jennings for a relative? This is quite something, to rent artificial friends and relatives right inside the house.
 * Kurt Vonnegut interviewed by Frank Houston, "The Salon Interview: Kurt Vonnegut", Salon (October 8, 1999)

 * One of the few good things about modern times: If you die horribly on television, you will not have died in vain. You will have entertained us.
 * Kurt Vonnegut, Cold Turkey, In These Times, May 10, 2004

 * Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative.
 * Kurt Vonnegut, in Cold Turkey at In These Times (10 May 2004)

W

 * And I'm not saying that television is vulgar and dumb because the people who compose Audience are vulgar and dumb. Television is the way it is simply because people tend to be extremely similar in their vulgar and prurient and dumb interests and wildly different in their refined and aesthetic and noble interests.
 * David Foster Wallace, E Unibus Pluram: Television and U.S. Fiction

 * I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can't stop eating peanuts.
 * Orson Welles, New York Herald Tribune, (Oct.12, 1956)

 * TV is a drug, and we as a nation have become hooked.
 * Kenny Werner, Effortless Mastery (1996, pp. 16)

 * What do you get from a glut of TV? A pain in the neck and an IQ of three Why don't you try simply reading a book? Or can you just not bear to look?
 * Oompa Loompas, Oompa Loompa (Mike Teavee) Leslie Bricusse and Anthony Newley, Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (film) (1971).

 * 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 — of that I am quite sure.
 * E. B. White, "Removal" (July 1938) from One Man's Meat (1942)

 * Television will enormously enlarge the eye's range, and, like radio, will advertise the Elsewhere. Together with the tabs, the mags, and the movies, it will insist that we forget the primary and the near in favor of the secondary and the remote.
 * E. B. White, "Removal" (July 1938) from One Man's Meat (1942)

 * I kind of treat moviemaking and TV like the Army, and I kind of always have. Whoever is in charge, is in charge, and if they're going to march you up a hill and get you all killed, that's what you do. You march up that hill. You have to respect that, you have to respect that chain of command. I've done it under directors I believed in, I've done it under directors I didn't believe in. I've done it with executives and on projects.
 * Joss Whedon, as interviewed by A. V. Club, Aug 8, 2007

Z
But you can't look away I make you think I'm delicious With the stuff that I say I'm the best you can get Have you guessed me yet? I'm the slime oozin' out From your TV set.
 * I may be vile and pernicious
 * Frank Zappa, "I'm the Slime", in Over-Nite Sensation (1973)

title: Television


text:
Help:Interlanguage link demo

This is a demo page for Help:Interwiki linking.

It shows interlanguage links, which, depending on the project, may all be in-page, or partly or fully at the edge.

& & ca:Viquipèdia:Com s'edita una pàgina cs:Wikipedie:Jak editovat stránku da:Wikipedia:Hvordan redigerer jeg en side de:Wikipedia:Handbuch - Artikel bearbeiten el:Wikipedia:& eo:Vikipedio:Kiel redakti pagxon es:Wikipedia:Cómo se edita una página fi:Wikipedia:Kuinka_sivuja_muokataan fr:Wikipédia:Syntaxe wikipédia ga:Vicipéid:Conas a cuirtear leathanach in eagar & & hu:Wikipédia:Hogyan szerkessz egy lapot it:Wikipedia:Guida_essenziale lt:Wikipedia:Kaip_Redaguoti_Puslap%C4%AF ja:Wikipedia:& ro:Wikipedia:Cum s& & simple:Wikipedia:How to edit sl:Wikipedija:Urejevanje slovenskih strani sr:%D0%92%D0%B8%D0%BA%D0%B8%D0%BF%D0%B5%D0%B4%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0:%D0%9A%D0%B0%D0%BA%D0%BE_%D1%81%D0%B5_%D0%BC%D0%B5%D1%9A%D0%B0_%D1%81%D1%82%D1%80%D0%B0%D0%BD%D0%B0 sv:Wikipedia:Hur man redigerar en sida th:Wikipedia:& tr:Wikipedia:Sayfa_nas%C4%B1l_de%C4%9Fi%C5%9Ftirilir %D8%B5%D9%81%D8%AD%DB%81_%DA%A9%D8%B3_%D8%B7%D8%B1%D8%AD_%D8%AA%D8%B1%D9%85%D9%8A%D9%85_%DA%A9%D8%B1%D9%8A%DA%BA vi:Wikipedia:C%C3%A1ch_ch%E1%BB%8Dn_l%E1%BB%8Dc_trang zh-cn:Wikipedia:%E5%A6%82%E4%BD%95%E7%BC%96%E8%BE%91%E9%A1%B5%E9%9D%A2 zh-tw:Wikipedia:&

license: Creative Commons - Attribution Share-Alike - https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/

title: Help:Interlanguage link demo


text:
William Drummond of Hawthornden

William Drummond of Hawthornden (13 December 1585 – 4 December 1649) was a Scottish poet.

Quotes

 * The last and greatest herald of Heaven's King, Girt with rough skins, hies to the deserts wild, Among that savage brood the woods forth bring, Which he than man more harmless found and mild.
 * "For the Baptist" Flowers of Sion (1623).

 * My lute, be as thou wert when thou didst grow With thy green mother in some shady grove, When immelodious winds but made thee move, And birds their ramage did on thee bestow.
 * To His Lute

 * My thoughts hold mortal strife; I do detest my life, And with lamenting cries Peace to my soul to bring Oft call that prince which here doth monarchise: — But he, grim-grinning King, Who caitiffs scorns, and doth the blest surprise, Late having deck'd with beauty's rose his tomb, Disdains to crop a weed, and will not come.
 * Inexorable

 * This Life, which seems so fair, Is like a bubble blown up in the air By sporting children's breath, Who chase it every where
 * This Life, which seems so fair

 * Of this fair volume which we World do name If we the sheets and leaves could turn with care, Of him who it corrects, and did it frame, We clear might read the art and wisdom rare.
 * Human Folly

 * Doth then the world go thus, doth all thus move? Is this the justice which on Earth we find? Is this that firm decree which all doth bind? Are these your influences, Powers above?
 * The Problem.

 * God never had a church but there, men say, The Devil a chapel hath raised by some wyles. I doubted of this saw, till on a day I westward spied great Edinburgh’s Saint Gyles.
 * Posthumous Poems, reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919). Compare: "Where God hath a temple, the Devil will have a chapel", Robert Burton, Anatomy of Melancholy, Part iii, Section 4, Member 1, Subsection 1.

Poems (1616)

 * What doth it serve to see sun's burning face, And skies enamelled with both the Indies' gold? Or moon at night in jetty chariot roll'd, And all the glory of that starry place?
 * "What doth it Serve?"

 * For what doth serve all that this world contains, Sith she for whom those once to me were dear, No part of them can have now with me here?
 * "What doth it Serve?"

 * Phœbus, arise! And paint the sable skies With azure, white, and red.
 * "Phoebus Arise".

 * Make an eternal spring; Give life to this dark world which lieth dead. Spread forth thy golden hair In larger locks than thou wast wont before, And emperor-like decore With diadem of pearl thy temples fair.
 * "Phoebus Arise".

 * This is the morn should bring unto this grove My love, to hear and recompense my love.
 * "Phoebus Arise".

 * Here is the pleasant place, And nothing wanted is, save She, alas!
 * "Phoebus Arise".

title: William Drummond of Hawthornden


text: Template:Hi

title: Template:Hi


text:
Template:Ed

[ Edit ]

title: Template:Ed


text:
Talk:George S. Patton

Moved because the full name+M.I. is more common.

Unsourced
Wikiquote no longer allows unsourced quotations, and they are in process of being removed from our pages (see Wikiquote:Limits on quotations); but if you can provide a reliable and precise source for any quote on this list please move it to.

 * It is the cold glitter of the attacker's eye not the point of the questing bayonet that breaks the line. (Moved to main page, suitably referenced).
 * Hold'em by the nose and kick'em in the pants.
 * It seems to me a certainty that the fatalistic teachings of Mohammed and the utter degradation of the Arab women are the outstanding causes for the arrested development of the Arab. He is exactly as he was around the year 700, while we have been developing.
 * I don't care what color you are, so long as you go up there and kill those Kraut sons-of-bitches!
 * I am in the pay of the United States government. If I vote against the administration I am voting against my commander-in-chief. If I vote for the administration in office I am being bought.
 * If a man has done his best, what else is there?
 * If everybody is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.
 * I'm a soldier, I fight where I am told, and I win where I fight.
 * I'm not going to subsidize cowardice.
 * I don't measure a man's success by how high he climbs but how high he bounces when he hits bottom.
 * Just drive down that road until you get blown up.
 * Instructions to reconnaissance troops
 * Kill all the Germans you can, but do not kill them when they are up against a wall ready to surrender. Do your killing in the fields. We are to honor the Rules of Land Warfare at all times. If a German surrenders, he is to be treated with respect as a prisoner of war, the same treatment you would hope to get as a prisoner if you are unlucky enough to be captured by the enemy. Americans are not savages. Americans do not kick people in the face if they have been knocked down.
 * March toward the sound of gunfire, an easily recognizable sound that they could usually find in front of them.
 * May God have mercy upon my enemies, because I sure as hell won't.
 * 'May God have mercy on our enemies; they will need it.' The Patton Papers 1940-1945, 1972, Martin Blumenson, Houghton Mifflin, Boston,
 * This is similar to a remark made by Elizabeth I of England.
 * This quote appears in Ken Burns' The Civil War TV series, and is attributed to Maj Gen Joseph Hooker in 1863 when he assumed command of the Union Army of the Potomac; he very shortly thereafter got the sh!t kicked out of him at the Battle of Chancelllorsville.
 * Moral courage is the most valuable and usually the most absent characteristic in men.
 * Prepare for the unknown by studying how others in the past have coped with the unforeseeable and the unpredictable.
 * Son, only a pimp in a Louisiana whore house carries pearl handled revolvers, these are ivory.
 * Upon being asked by an American reporter where he got his "pearl" handled revolvers.
 * Take calculated risks. This is quite different from being rash. My personal belief is that if you have a 50% chance, take it!
 * There's only one proper way for a professional soldier to die: the last bullet of the last battle of the last war.
 * You are always on parade.
 * You are never beaten until you admit it.
 * You need to overcome the tug of people against you as you reach for high goals.
 * The M1 rifle is the finest battle implement ever devised.

Misattributed? George S. Patton's speech to the Third Army
Why this quote is listed as miattributed? "I want you to remember that no bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor, dumb bastard die for his country." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_S._Patton's_speech_to_the_Third_Army
 * "Your job is not to die for your country. Your job is to get the other poor sonofabitch to die for his country." Ben Bova sez he.Civic Cat (talk) 18:01, 17 June 2014 (UTC)

It certainly wasn't coined by the movie Patton as the article seems to suggest. The earliest reference I can find to it is from 1958 in War and Peace in the Space Age, by James M. Gavin, p 64, where he claims to have heard it in Africa. I'm not sure if this book is available online, but it if almost certainly where the movie took it from.

Robert Hannsen
Robert Hannsen would quote Patton, "The quicker we clean up this Goddamned mess, the quicker we can take a little jaunt against the purple pissing Japs and clean out their nest, too. Before the Goddamned Marines get all of the credit." Is there a reason it's not listed here George_S._Patton2600:387:F:5618:0:0:0:A 16:07, 8 June 2023 (UTC)

title: Talk:George S. Patton


text:
Template:Hh

This is a copy of m:Help: using project-specific templates. Don't edit this page, except to replace the contents with the current version of that master page (please do). To make changes applicable on all projects, edit the master page; to change project-specific content, edit the templates; to make demo's work, copy templates and images to this project. Many sister pages have not yet been copied, so links to them do not work yet. -

title: Template:Hh


text: Template:Hc

title: Template:Hc


text:
Template:Ph:Interlanguage link demo

-

title: Template:Ph:Interlanguage link demo


text:
Template:Ph:Images and other uploaded files

-


text:
White Noise (novel)

White Noise is the eighth novel by Don DeLillo, and is an example of postmodern literature. Widely considered his "breakout" work, the book won the National Book Award in 1985.

Alfonse

 * “Californians invented the concept of lifestyle. This alone warrants their doom.” – Alfonse

Babette

 * “I love Omar, Jack. We all know about men and their insane rage. This is something men are very good at. Insane and violent jealousy. Homicidal rage. When people are good at something, it’s only natural that they look for a chance to do this thing. If I were good at it, I would do it. It happens I’m not. So instead of going into homicidal rages, I read to the blind. In other words I know my limits. I am willing to settle for less.” – Babette.

Heinrich

 * “Don’t you know about all those theorems that say nothing is what it seems? There’s no past, present, or future outside our own mind. The so-called laws of motion are a big hoax.” – Heinrich

 * “What good is my truth? My truth means nothing.” – Heinrich

Jack

 * “How strange it is. We have these deep terrible lingering fears about ourselves and the people we love. Yet we walk around, talk to people, eat and drink. We manage to function. The feelings are deep and real. Shouldn’t they paralyze us? How is it we can survive them, at least for awhile? We drive a car, we teach a class. How is it that no one sees how deeply afraid we were, last night, this morning? Is it something we all hide from each other, by mutual consent? Or do we share the same secret without knowing it? Wear the same disguise" - Jack

 * “Brilliant people never think of the lives they smash, being brilliant.” – Jack

 * “I am the false character that follows the name around.” – Jack

 * I feel sad for people and the queer part we play in our own disasters – Jack

 * “Society is set up in such a way that it’s the poor and the uneducated who suffer the main impact of natural and man-made disasters.” – Jack

 * “Terrifying data is now an industry in itself. Different firms compete to see how badly they can scare us.” – Jack

 * What we are reluctant to touch often seems the very fabric of our salvation. – Jack

 * "Waves of relief and gratitude flowed over me. The system had blessed my life. I felt its support and approval." - Jack, at the ATM.

 * "The family is the cradle of the world’s misinformation." - Jack, ch. 17, p. 81.

Murray

 * “I don’t trust anybody’s nostalgia but my own. Nostalgia is a product of dissatisfaction and rage. It’s a settling of grievances between the present and the past. The more powerful the nostalgia, the closer you come to violence. War is the form nostalgia takes when men are hard-pressed to say something good about their country.” – Murray

 * “Men shout as they die, to be noticed, remembered for a second or two….You know a couple of useless things about a person that become major facts of identification and cosmic placement when he dies suddenly, after a short illness, in his own bed, with a comforter and matching pillows, on a rainy Wednesday afternoon, feverish, a little congested in the sinuses and chest, thinking about his dry cleaning.” – Murray

 * “Once you’re out of school, it is only a matter of time before you experience the vast loneliness and dissatisfaction of consumers who have lost their group identity.”- Murray

 * “Once you’ve seen the signs about the barn, it becomes impossible to see the barn…They are taking pictures of taking pictures.” – Murray

 * “This is the nature of modern death. It has a life independent of us. It is growing in prestige and dimension. It has a sweep it never had before. We study it objectively. We can predict its appearance, trace its path in the body. We can take cross-section pictures of it, tape its tremors and waves. We’ve never been so close to it, so familiar with its habits and attitudes. We know it intimately. But it continues to grow, to acquire breadth and scope, new outlets, new passages and means. The more we learn, the more it grows. Is this some law of physics? Every advance in knowledge and technique is matched by a new kind of death, a new strain. Death adapts, like a viral agent. Is it a law of nature? Or some private superstition of mine? I sense that the dead are closer to us than ever. I sense that we inhabit the same air as the dead.” – Murray

Jack: “To be lost without a trace. To be swept away." - Murray
 * "To be so enormous. Then to die.”

 * “You’ve said good-bye to everyone but yourself. How does a person say good-bye to himself? It’s a juicy existential dilemma.” - Murray

 * "Tibetans try to see death for what it is. It is the end of attachment to things. ... We don't have to cling to life artificially, or to death for that matter. We simply walk toward the sliding doors. Waves and radiation. Look how well-lighted everything is. The place is sealed off, self-contained. It is timeless. Another reason why I think of Tibet. Dying is an art in Tibet. A priest walks in, sits down, tells the weeping relatives to get out and has the room sealed. Doors, windows sealed. He has serious business to see to. Chants, numerology, horoscopes, recitations. Here we don't die, we shop. But the difference is less marked than you think." - Murray

Vernon

 * “Here I am. Big deal. Toot the horn.” – Vernon

 * “The thing about marriage today is you don’t have to go outside the home to get those little extras. You can get whatever you want in the recesses of the American home. These are the times we live in, for better or for worse. Wives will do things. They want to do things. You don’t have to drop the little looks. It used to be the only thing available in the American home was the basic natural act. Now you get the options too. The action is thick, let me tell you. It’s an amazing comment on our times that the more options you get in the home, the more prostitutes you see in the streets. How do you figure it, Jack? You’re the professor. What does it mean?” – Vernon

Winnie

 * “I think it’s a mistake to lose one’s sense of death, even one’s fear of death. Isn’t death the boundary we need? Doesn’t it give precious texture to life, a sense of definition? You have to ask yourself whether anything you do in this life would have beauty and meaning without the knowledge you carry of a final line, a border or a limit.” – Winnie

General

 * "All the old muddles and quirks," I said. "Faith, religion, life everlasting. The great old human gullibilities. Are you saying that you don't take them seriously? Your dedication is a pretense?"

 * If the special character of Nyodene Derivative (added to the everyday drift of effluents, pollutants, contaminants and deliriants) had caused this aesthetic leap from already brilliant sunsets to broad towering ruddled visionary skyscapes, tinged with dread, no one had been able to prove it.

 * Maybe when we die, the first thing we'll say is, 'I know this feeling. I was here before.'

 * May the days be aimless. Let the seasons drift. Do not advance the action according to a plan.

 * "Our pretense is a dedication. Someone must appear to believe. Our lives are no less serious than if we professed real faith, real belief. As belief shrinks from the world, it is more necessary than ever that someone believe. Wild-eyed men in caves. Nuns in black. Monks who do not speak. We are left to believe. Fools, children. Those who have abandoned belief must still believe in us. They are sure they are right not to believe but they know belief must not fade completely. Hell is when no one believes..."

 * The face on the screen was Babette's... I'd seen her just an hour ago, eating eggs, but her appearance on the screen made me think of her as some distant figure from the past, some ex-wife and absentee mother, a walker in the mists of the dead.

"If you don't, why should I?" "If you did, maybe I would." "If I did, you would not have to."
 * "You don't believe in heaven? A nun?"

title: White Noise (novel)


text: Template:Clr

title: Template:Clr


text:
Dan Rather

Daniel Irvin "Dan" Rather, Jr. (born October 31, 1931) is an American journalist. Rather began his career in Texas and as an early-career reporter was on the scene of the Kennedy assassination in Dallas. His reporting elevated his position in CBS News, where he was White House correspondent beginning in 1964. He served as foreign correspondent in London and Vietnam over the next two years before returning to the White House correspondent position, covering the Nixon presidency, including the trip to China, Watergate scandal and ultimate resignation. When Walter Cronkite retired in 1981, Rather was promoted to news anchor for the CBS Evening News, a role he occupied for 24 years.

Quotes

 * Good evening. President Reagan, still training his spotlight on the economy, today signed a package of budget cuts that he will send to Congress tomorrow. Lesley Stahl has the story.
 * Rather's first lines in his debut as anchor of The CBS Evening News, Monday, March 9, 1981.

 * He invented the job, the job of anchoring, did it himself for 40 years, and taught two generations of anchormen, including this one, how to do it. He's retiring, but he'll be with us in spirit, and he'll be a part of every broadcast we do.
 * On Douglas Edwards' retirement (1988)

 * There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people’s necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be ‘necklaced’ here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions...I do not except myself from this criticism...What we are talking about here—whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not—is a form of self-censorship. I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend.
 * Quoted by Norman Solomon in Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You, p. 23  (2003)

 * [My job is] a very high trapeze act, frequently with no net.
 * Quoted in The New Yorker, March 7, 2005.

 * Those who dumb down the news, trivialize the news with in-studio shouting matches passing for debate, those who tart up the news with celebrity gossip, scandal and sensationalism are playing right into the hands of those that stand to gain the most from the news being seen as irrelevant and trivial and no more or less worth your attention than the next episode of 'American Idol.' [...] I worry that if it becomes no more than a reality show, something that could be scripted and rigged behind the scenes without anyone really getting upset about it, that our freedom of the press will become another one of those constitutionally granted rights that can be watered down and eventually taken away from us.
 * Speech 3 February 2011 at San Antonio College, as quoted in Jeanne Jakle, "Rather warns media is in 'state of crisis'", San Antonio Express-News, 4 February 2011.

 * To use tragedy to sow division is the hallmark of a despot.
 * Rather's Facebook page, 6 February 2018

CBS Evening News Farewell (2005)

 * Final broadcast for CBS Evening News (9 March 2005 [his 24h anniversary])

We've shared a lot in the 24 years we've been meeting here each evening, and before I say 'Good night' this night, I need to say thank you. Thank you to the thousands of wonderful professionals at CBS News, past and present, with whom it's been my honor to work over these years. And a deeply felt thanks to all of you, who have let us into your homes night after night; it has been a privilege, and one never taken lightly.

Not long after I first came to the anchor chair, I briefly signed off using the word, Courage. I want to return to it now, in a different way: to a nation still nursing a broken heart for what happened here in 2001, and especially to those who found themselves closest to the events of September 11; to our soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines, in dangerous places; to those who have endured the tsunami, and to all who have suffered natural disasters, and must now find the will to rebuild; to the oppressed and to those whose lot it is to struggle in financial hardship or in failing health; to my fellow journalists in places where reporting the truth means risking all; and to each of you, Courage. For The CBS Evening News, Dan Rather reporting. Good night.

About Dan Rather

 * 106 [degrees] in the valley...I was sweating like Dan Rather checking for forged documents.
 * Jay Leno, September 10, 2004, on The Tonight Show.

 * What are the odds that Dan Rather would have accepted such patently phony documents from, say, the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth?"
 * Ann Coulter, September 16, 2004.

 * Occasional candor from big-name journalists can be illuminating. Eight months after 9/11, in an interview with BBC television, Dan Rather said that American journalists were intimidated in the wake of the attacks. Making what he called “an obscene comparison,” the CBS news anchor ruminated: “There was a time in South Africa that people would put flaming tires around people’s necks if they dissented. And in some ways the fear is that you will be ‘necklaced’ here, you will have a flaming tire of lack of patriotism put around your neck. Now it is that fear that keeps journalists from asking the toughest of the tough questions.” Rather added that “I do not except myself from this criticism,” and he went on: “What we are talking about here—whether one wants to recognize it or not, or call it by its proper name or not—is a form of self-censorship. I worry that patriotism run amok will trample the very values that the country seeks to defend.”
 * Norman Solomon in Target Iraq: What the News Media Didn't Tell You, p. 24  (2003)

 * Did Rather ever break any news? Sure. He reported, in 1969, that President Nixon was about to fire J. Edgar Hoover. Except Nixon never did fire Hoover, who was still FBI director at his death in 1972. Rather also bungled a story that Nixon was about to fire a top Vietnam official. “Dan had an overwhelming drive and ambition, and at times his ambition overcame his journalistic caution,” Rather’s longtime CBS colleague Bob Pierpoint told Weisman, adding, “He had a more dramatic persona than the others.” (Pierpoint praised Rather’s “mannerism and his delivery.”)
 * Dan Rather, Fake Newsman - Kyle Smith, National Review (2017)

 * When Rather stormed off the CBS Evening News set in a hissy fit in 1987 because he learned that U.S. Open tennis coverage was going to bleed into the news and cost him precious face time, the network was forced into the unprecedented situation of going black for six minutes. Even being fired by CBS after the 2004 debacle in which Rather’s team, in collusion with John Kerry’s campaign, aired unverified documents about George W. Bush’s National Guard service that were almost certainly fake, didn’t teach Rather anything: He still stands by the story.
 * Dan Rather, Fake Newsman - Kyle Smith, National Review (2017)

title: Dan Rather


text:
Jay Leno

James Douglas Muir Leno (born April 28, 1950) is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer, and television host. After doing stand-up comedy for years, he became the host of NBC's The Tonight Show with Jay Leno from 1992 to 2009. Beginning in September 2009, Leno started a primetime talk show, titled The Jay Leno Show, which aired weeknights at 10:00 p.m. ET, also on NBC. After The Jay Leno Show was canceled in January 2010 amid a host controversy, Leno returned to host The Tonight Show with Jay Leno on March 1, 2010. He hosted his last episode of The Tonight Show on February 6, 2014. That year, he was inducted into the Television Hall of Fame.

The Tonight Show

 * Welcome back! If you're wondering where our good friend -- Kevin Eubanks couldn't be here. Kevin is on tour. He's in France right now. He called me today and he's over there and he wouldn't be back until next week. So if you're wondering where Kevin Eubanks is, he's with us in spirit certainly. Okay. Boy, this is the hard part. I want to thank you, the audience. You folks have been just incredibly loyal. (emotionally) This is tricky. (laughs) We wouldn't be on the air without you people. Secondly, this has been the greatest 22 years of my life. (applause) I am the luckiest guy in the world. I got to meet presidents, astronauts, movie stars, it's just been incredible. I got to work with lighting people who made me look better than I really am. I got to work with audio people who made me sound better than I really do. (voice breaking) And I got to work with producers! And writers! (choked pause) And just all kinds of talented people who make me look a lot smarter than I really am. I'll tell you something. First year of this show, I lost my mom. Second year, I lost my dad; then my brother died. And after that, I was pretty much out of family. And the folks here became my family. Consequently, when they went through rough times, I tried to be there for them. The last time we left the show, you might remember we had the 64 children that were born among all our staffers that married. That was a great moment. And when people say to me, hey why don't you go to ABC? Why don't you go to FOX? Why don't you go…? I didn't know anybody over there. These are the only people I have ever known. I'm also proud to say this is a a union show. And I have never worked (applause) -- I have never worked with a more professional group of people in my life. They get paid good money and they do a good job. And when the guys and women on this show would show me the new car they bought or the house up the street here in Burbank that one of the guys got, I felt I played a bigger role in their success as they played in mine. That was just a great feeling. And I'm really excited for Jimmy Fallon. You know, it's fun to kind of be the old guy and sit back here and see where the next generation takes this great institution, and it really is. It's been a great institution for 60 years. I am so glad I got to be a part of it, but it really is time to go, hand it off to the next guy; it really is. And in closing, I want to quote Johnny Carson, who was the greatest guy to ever do this job. And he said, I bid you all a heartfelt good night. Now that I brought the room down, hey, Garth, have you got anything to liven this party up? Give it a shot! Garth Brooks!
 * Farewell speech, February 6, 2014

 * 106 [degrees] in the valley… I was sweating like Dan Rather checking for forged documents.
 * Monologue, September 10, 2004

 * I was in the ROTC. Of course, ROTC stood for "Running off to Canada".
 * Monologue, June 24, 2005

 * How many watched the President's speech last night? [half-hearted audience applause] How many watched American Idol? [thundering applause] Okay, there you go! You get the government you deserve.
 * Monologue, February 1, 2006

 * So China's president [Hu Jintao] meets, uh— meets America's president. It's like President "Who?" meeting President "Huh?".
 * Monologue, April 19, 2006

 * A new poll shows that Americans now believe that Bill Clinton is more honest than President Bush. […] At least when Clinton screwed the nation, he did it one person at a time.
 * Monologue, May 12, 2006

 * And some sad news… the first lesbian couple to legally get married in the state of Massachusetts has split up. They cited irreconcilable similarities.
 * Monologue, 24 July 2006

 * Stephen Hawking is getting a divorce. That's scary. If the smartest guy in the world can't figure out women, we're screwed.
 * Monologue, 20 October 2006

 * Afterwards, President Bush said, "Maliki is the right man for the job." Just to remind you, Bush also said FEMA's Michael Brown was the right man for the job, Donald Rumsfeld was the right man for the job, Tom DeLay was the right man for the job… which would be okay if Bush was the right man for the job.
 * On the 30 November 2006 "breakfast summit" with Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki
 * Monologue, 30 November 2006

 * Now, today is the day we honor, of course, the Presidents, ranging from George Washington, who couldn't tell a lie, to George Bush, who couldn't tell the truth, to Bill Clinton, who couldn't tell the difference.
 * Monologue, 19 February 2007 (U.S. Presidents Day)

 * Women will soon be able to make their own sperm using their own bone marrow. Is that unbelievable? How unfair is that for us guys, huh? I mean, all these years, we've been in charge of manufacturing and distribution, you know what I'm saying? We provide free delivery and installation…
 * Monologue, 19 April 2007

 * No, they said they do not believe in evolution, then they said the biggest threat to America: religious radicals living in the Dark Ages.
 * Speaking of Sam Brownback, Mike Huckabee, and Tom Tancredo at the 3 May Republican Presidential debate
 * Monologue, 4 May 2007

 * "Fred, what happened to your ass?" "Oh, the fat guy at the office sneezed on me."
 * Speaking of the discovery that obesity is contagious
 * Monologue, 26 July 2007

 * I didn't realize it was October until I saw the Chicago Cubs choking.
 * Monologue, 4 October, 2008

 * How many of you watched the vice presidential debate expecting Sarah Palin to screw up? Be honest. [cheers and applause] : And how many of you watched the debate expecting Joe Biden to screw up? [more cheers and applause] : And how many of you watched the baseball game knowing the Cubs would screw up? ''[more applause]
 * Monologue, 6 October, 2008

 * [about the Chicago Cubs being swept by the L.A. Dodgers in the 2008 NLDS]: How about next year, we only let the Cubs play using steroids?
 * Monologue, 7 October, 2008

 * Folks, tomorrow America will get to hear those four words we've been waiting for: "Former president George Bush".
 * Monologue, 19 January, 2009

 * Hillary says she has been tested. Well, I hope so. You never know what Bill might bring home.
 * Guest monologue on The Tonight Show, 17 February, 2016

 * And as you know, this whole Hillary e-mail scandal brought Anthony Wiener back into the news. Now here's a question nobody has asked.  Anthony Wiener is Jewish, right?  Right?  So does this scandal make him a Hebrew National Wiener?
 * Guest monologue on The Tonight Show, 31 October, 2016

 * The economy is so bad, two Milwaukee men were arrested this week for trying to join ISIS. Did you hear their excuse, they said, "Hey!  Nobody else is hiring!"  THAT'S how bad it is!
 * Guest monologue on The Tonight Show, 31 October, 2016

 * The economy is so bad, I saw Matthew McConaughey talking to himself in a Kia! THAT'S how bad it is!
 * Guest monologue on The Tonight Show, 3 April, 2017

French Bashing and Francophobia

 * Well, there's nothing funnier to me than the French. The French Resistance is probably the biggest mythical joke that ever existed. There were four guys in the French Resistance. They couldn't hand over the Jewish people fast enough. Oh, please, don't tell me about the French. The French have all sorts of secret deals with Saddam and everybody else for two cents a liter. It's an easy target.
 * interview with Nikki Finke, LA Weekly, September 17, 2004

 * French troops arrived in Afghanistan last week, and not a minute too soon. The French are acting as advisers to the Taliban, to teach them how to surrender properly.
 * The Tonight Show, November 26, 2004

 * "This is now the twelfth day of rioting in France. They have been rioting for almost two weeks. And France has still not surrendered. That's like a record.
 * The Tonight Show, November 7, 2005, as reported on miquelon.org

 * Congratulations to the Italian people for winning the World Cup. … They won after France’s best player got ejected for head butting. That’s the closest anyone in a French uniform has come to combat in 60 years
 * The Tonight Show, July 11th, 2006

Miscellaneous

 * In America, we like everyone to know about the good work we're doing anonymously.
 * Said on a 2008 episode (12.7) of British motoring program Top Gear.
 * Racecar driving is a lot like sex; all men think they're good at it.
 * Said on a 2009 episode (13.7) of British motoring program Top Gear.

title: Jay Leno