Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
. . . Americans are the best entertained and quite likely the least well-informed people in the Western world.
Neil Postman
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
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
Wells
Entertained
Well
Informed
World
Likely
People
Western
Americans
Least
Quite
Best
More quotes by Neil Postman
Remember: in order for a perception to change one must be frustrated in one's actions or change one's purpose.
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
'The scientific method,' Thomas Henry Huxley once wrote, 'is nothing but the normal working of the human mind.' That is to say, when the mind is working that is to say further, when it is engaged in correcting its mistakes.
Neil Postman
...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
A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.
Neil Postman
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.
Neil Postman
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
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
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
Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.
Neil Postman
Cyberspace' is a metaphorical idea which is supposed to be the space where your consciousness is located when you're using computer technology on the Internet, for example, and I'm not entirely sure it's such a useful term, but I think that's what most people mean by it.
Neil Postman
At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.
Neil Postman
The written word endures, the spoken word disappears
Neil Postman
The problem in the 19th century with information was that we lived in a culture of information scarcity, and so humanity addressed that problem beginning with photography and telegraphy and the - in the 1840s. We tried to solve the problem of overcoming the limitations of space, time, and form.
Neil Postman
People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.
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.
Neil Postman
We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother?
Neil Postman
An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.
Neil Postman
When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
Neil Postman
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