Quote

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

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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
Looks
Exchange
Good
Argue
Arguing
Images
Americans
Shallowness
Longer
Celebrities
Talk
Entertain
Ideas
Propositions

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The key to all fanatical beliefs is that they are self-confirming....(some beliefs are) fanatical not because they are false, but because they are expressed in such a way that they can never be shown to be false.
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When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
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...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.
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The written word endures, the spoken word disappears
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Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.
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The idea of taking what people call the 'entertainment culture' as a focus of study, including historical perspective, is not a bad idea.
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At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.
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The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies.
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By itself photography cannot deal with the unseen, the remote, the internal, the abstract, it does not speak of Man, only of a man not of Tree, only a tree.
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As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.
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We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant.
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Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
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The effects of technology are always unpredictable. But they are not always inevitable.
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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.
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Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.
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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.
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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.
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Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.
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An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.
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My argument is limited to saying that a major new medium changes the structure of discourse it does so by encouraging certain uses of the intellect, by favoring certain definitions of intelligence and wisdom, and by demanding a certain kind of content - in a phrase, by creating new forms of truth-telling.
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