10 must read quotes about television from history’s most creative men
September 30th marks 84 years since the world’s first television broadcast. Television is named after Latin and Greek words meaning far sight. It is arguably one of the most influential technologies ever invented.
Since the 1950s it has been the main medium for melding public opinion. An incredible 78 percent of the world’s households now own at least one TV set. Throughout its long history it has been the subject of much criticism. Here are ten writers, film makers, musicians and poets who got turned off by the tube.
John Lennon
“If everyone demanded peace instead of another television set, then there’d be peace.”
Alfred Hitchcock
“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.”
T. S. Eliot
“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.”
Orson Welles
“I hate television. I hate it as much as peanuts. But I can’t stop eating peanuts.”
W.H. Auden
“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.” — The Dyer’s Hand
Groucho Marx
“I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns on the set, I go into the other room and read a book.”
Edward R. Murrow
“If we were to do the Second Coming of Christ in color for a full hour, there would be a considerable number of stations which would decline to carry it on the grounds that a Western or a quiz show would be more profitable.”
Frank Lloyd Wright
“Television: chewing gum for the eyes.”
Roald Dahl
“So, please, oh please, we beg, we pray, go throw your TV set away, and in its place you can install, a lovely bookcase on the wall.”
For more sharp words from creative minds, see David Bowie’s most legendary quotes or these campy 1960s movies that prove the small screen wasn’t the only guilty pleasure.
