Quote

An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.

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
Inevitably
Uses
Leads
Educated
Use
Reason
Practiced
Mind
Skeptical
Outlook

More quotes by Neil Postman

Image
Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.
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
Image
Printing links the present with forever. It carries personal identity into realms unknown.
Neil Postman
Image
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
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
[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
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
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
Image
The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies.
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 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
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
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
The past is strapped to our backs. We do not have to see it we can always feel it. People gather bundles of sticks to build bridges they never cross. People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.
Neil Postman
Image
Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.
Neil Postman
Image
People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.
Neil Postman
Image
When media make war against each other, it is a case of world-views in collision.
Neil Postman
Image
At its best, schooling can be about how to make a life, which is quite different from how to make a living.
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
As a culture moves from orality to writing to printing to televising, its ideas of truth move with it.
Neil Postman