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As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.
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
Printing
Moves
Move
Moving
Culture
Truth
Ideas
Writing
More quotes by Neil Postman
We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother?
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The effects of technology are always unpredictable. But they are not always inevitable.
Neil Postman
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.
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We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant.
Neil Postman
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.
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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.
Neil Postman
Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.
Neil Postman
People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.
Neil Postman
An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.
Neil Postman
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
When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
Neil Postman
A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.
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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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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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. . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.
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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
Typography fostered the modern idea of individuality, but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and integration.
Neil Postman
It is not entirely true that a TV producer or reporter has complete control over the contents of programs. The interests and inclinations of the audience have as much to do with the what is on television as do the ideas of the producer and reporter.
Neil Postman
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.
Neil Postman
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
