Neil Postman

“We rarely talk about television, only about what’s on television”

— Neil Postman

“Tüketici psikodramalarla yatıştırılan bir hastadır.”

— Neil Postman

“other forms of conversation will always remain. Speech, for example, and writing.”

— Neil Postman

“In America, the least amusing people are its professional entertainers.”

— Neil Postman

“It is certain that no culture can flourish without narratives of transcendent origin and power”

— Neil Postman

A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.

— Neil Postman

When media make war against each other, it is a case of world- views in collision.

— Neil Postman

“Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see.”

— Neil Postman

It is a mistake to suppose that any technological innovation has a one-sided effect. Every technology is both a burden and a…

— Neil Postman

TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news,…

— Neil Postman

I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy…

— Neil Postman

It is inescapable that every culture must negotiate with technology, whether it does so intelligently or not. A bargain is struck in…

— Neil Postman

You can only photograph a fragment of the here and now. The photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as…

— Neil Postman

If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if…

— Neil Postman

“Lippmann, for example, wrote in 1920: “There can be no liberty for a community which lacks the means by which to detect lies.”

— Neil Postman

“Surrounding every technology are institutions whose organization—not to mention their reason for being—reflects the world-view promoted by the technology.”

— Neil Postman

Our politics, religion, news, athletics, education and commerce have been transformed into congenial adjuncts of show business, largely without protest or even…

— Neil Postman

People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it…

— Neil Postman

“Because we are imperfect souls, our knowledge is imperfect. The history of learning is an adventure in overcoming our errors. There is…

— Neil Postman

The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could…

— Neil Postman

Through the computer, the heralds say, we will make education better, religion better, politics better, our minds better — best of all,…

— Neil Postman

“That is the function of theories—to oversimplify, and thus to assist believers in organizing, weighting, and excluding information. Therein lies the power…

— Neil Postman

“Abetted by a form of education that in itself has been emptied of any coherent world-view, Technopoly deprives us of the social,…

— Neil Postman

Television is a non graded curriculum and excludes no viewer for any reason, at any time. In other words, in doing away…

— Neil Postman

Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures…

— Neil Postman

“If a nuclear holocost should occur somewhere in the world, it will not happen because of insufficient information; if children are starving…

— Neil Postman

The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the…

— Neil Postman

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent. The last refuge is, of course, giving…

— Neil Postman

“These include the beliefs that the primary, if not the only, goal of human labor and thought is efficiency; that technical calculation…

— Neil Postman

“But it is not time constraints alone that produce such fragmented and discontinuous language. When a television show is in process, it…

— Neil Postman

“Perhaps we should abandon the whole idea of trying to make students intelligent and focus on the idea of making them less…

— Neil Postman

“Huxley grasped, as Orwell did not, that it is not necessary to conceal anything from a public insensible to contradiction and narcotized…

— Neil Postman

“Public education does not serve a public. It creates a public. And in creating the right kind of public, the schools contribute…

— Neil Postman

“In America, everyone is entitled to an opinion, and it is certainly useful to have a few when a pollster shows up.…

— Neil Postman

“Parents embraced “Sesame Street” for several reasons, among them that it assuaged their guilt over the fact that they could not or…

— Neil Postman

“This is the lesson of all great television commercials: They provide a slogan, a symbol or a focus that creates for viewers…

— Neil Postman

“As the spectacular triumphs of technology mounted, something else was happening: old sources of belief came under siege. Nietzsche announced that God…

— Neil Postman

“Technopoly is to say that its information immune system is inoperable. Technopoly is a form of cultural AIDS, which I here use…

— Neil Postman

“Moreover, we have seen enough by now to know that technological changes in our modes of communication are even more ideology-laden than…

— Neil Postman

“Shaw once remarked that all professions are conspiracies against the laity. I would go further: in Technopoly, all experts are invested with…

— Neil Postman