Neil Postman

“The credibility of the teller is the ultimate test of the truth of a proposition. (102)”

— Neil Postman

“in oral cultures proverbs and sayings are not occasional devices:”

— Neil Postman

The effects of technology are always unpredictable. But they are not always inevitable.

— Neil Postman

“Television is not old enough to have matched printing’s output of junk.”

— Neil Postman

Children enter school as question marks and leave as periods.

— Neil Postman

“In every tool we create, an idea is embedded that goes beyond the function of the thing itself.”

— Neil Postman

Printing links the present with forever. It carries personal identity into realms unknown.

— Neil Postman

People in distress will sometimes prefer a problem that is familiar to a solution that is not.

— Neil Postman

The shock of twentieth-century technology numbed our brains and we are just beginning to notice the spiritual and social debris that our…

— Neil Postman

For the message of television as metaphor is not only that all the world is a stage but that the stage is…

— Neil Postman

“With the invention of the clock, Eternity ceased to serve as the measure and focus of human events.”

— Neil Postman

“technological change is not additive; it is ecological. A new technology does not merely add something; it changes everything”.”

— Neil Postman

“The problem is not that television presents us with entertaining subject matter but that all subject matter is presented as entertaining, which…

— Neil Postman

“How people think about time and space, and about things and processes, will be greatly influenced by the grammatical features of their…

— 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

We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother?

— Neil Postman

“embedded in every tool is an ideological bias, a predisposition to construct the world as one thing rather than another, to value…

— Neil Postman

There is no way to help a learner to be disciplined, active, and thoroughly engaged unless he perceives a problem to be…

— Neil Postman

Once you have learned to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and…

— 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…

— Neil Postman

It is not entirely true that a TV producer or reporter has complete control over the contents of programs. The interests and…

— Neil Postman

“technology imperiously commandeers our most important terminology. It redefines “freedom,” “truth,” “intelligence,” “fact,” “wisdom,” “memory,” “history”—all the words we live by. And…

— Neil Postman

Television is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages…

— Neil Postman

Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. From a biological point of view it is…

— Neil Postman

The way in which the photograph records experience is also different from the way of language. Language makes sense only when it…

— Neil Postman

Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh…

— Neil Postman

“Technocracy gave us the idea of progress, and of necessity loosened our bonds with tradition—whether political or spiritual. Technocracy filled the air…

— Neil Postman

“We may take as our guide, here, John Dewey's observation that the content of a lesson is the least important thing about…

— Neil Postman

“Alfred North Whitehead summed it up best when he remarked that the greatest invention of the nineteenth century was the idea of…

— Neil Postman

“Free human dialogue, wandering wherever the agility of the mind allows, lies at the heart of education. If teachers do not have…

— Neil Postman

“A message denotes a specific, concrete statement about the world. But the forms of our media, including the symbols through which they…

— Neil Postman

Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas. Like language itself, a technology predisposes us…

— Neil Postman

“There can be no disputing that the computer has increased the power of large-scale organizations like the armed forces, or airline companies…

— Neil Postman

“. . . we come astonishingly close to the mystical beliefs of Pythagoras and his followers who attempted to submit all of…

— Neil Postman

“From millions of sources all over the globe, through every possible channel and medium—light waves, airwaves, ticker tapes, computer banks, telephone wires,…

— Neil Postman

“Educators may bring upon themselves unnecessary travail by taking a tactless and unjustifiable position about the relation between scientific and religious narratives.…

— Neil Postman

“How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to…

— Neil Postman

“Attend any conference on telecommunications or computer technology, and you will be attending a celebration of innovative machinery that generates, stores, and…

— Neil Postman

“We were keeping our eye on 1984. When the year came and the prophecy didn't, thoughtful Americans sang softly in praise of…

— Neil Postman

“a peek-a-boo world, where now this event, now that, pops into view for a moment, then vanishes again. It is an improbable…

— Neil Postman