Quote

Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all, ourselves better. This is, of course, nonsense, and only the young or the ignorant or the foolish could believe it.

Neil Postman

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Neil Postman
Age: 72 †
Born: 1931
Born: March 8
Died: 2003
Died: October 5
Author
Communication Scholar
Essayist
Journalist
Media Critic
Pedagogue
Sociologist
University Teacher
Writer
New York City
New York
Mind
Courses
Believe
Course
Make
Education
Heralds
Politics
Nonsense
Religion
Foolish
Young
Ignorant
Best
Minds
Better
Computer

More quotes by Neil Postman

Image
A metaphor is not an ornament. It is an organ of perception. Through metaphors, we see the world as one thing or another.
Neil Postman
Image
The written word endures, the spoken word disappears
Neil Postman
Image
We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant.
Neil Postman
Image
An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.
Neil Postman
Image
As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.
Neil Postman
Image
Public schooling does not serve a public it creates a pubic.
Neil Postman
Image
If students get a sound education in the history, social effects and psychological biases of technology, they may grow to be adults who use technology rather than be used by it.
Neil Postman
Image
[It] is not that television is entertaining but that it has made entertainment itself the natural format for the representation of all experience. […] The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining. (87)
Neil Postman
Image
Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not exchange ideas, they exchange images. They do not argue with propositions they argue with good looks, celebrities and comercials.
Neil Postman
Image
Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration.
Neil Postman
Image
I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.
Neil Postman
Image
...there must be a sequence to learning, that perseverance and a certain measure of perspiration are indispensable, that individual pleasures must frequently be submerged in the interests of group cohesion, and that learning to be critical and to think conceptually and rigorously do not come easily to the young but are hard-fought victories.
Neil Postman
Image
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
Neil Postman
Image
Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. From a biological point of view it is inconceivable that any culture will forget that it needs to reproduce itself. But it is quite possible for a culture to exist without a social idea of children. Unlike infancy, childhood is a social artifact, not a biological category.
Neil Postman
Image
I am not a Luddite. I am suspicious of technology. I am perfectly aware of its benefits, but I also try to pay attention to some of the negative effects.
Neil Postman
Image
Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.
Neil Postman
Image
When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
Neil Postman
Image
The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on a page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.
Neil Postman
Image
If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether.
Neil Postman
Image
There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.
Neil Postman