television quotes

Life does not imitate art. It imitates bad television.

-Woody pseudonym of  Allen Stewart Konigsberg Allen
  In The Guardian, 31 Dec.

Most of the animals that appeared on British television screens in1950 did so sitting on door-mats.

- Sir David Frederick Attenborough
  The Zoo Quest Expeditions.

While theoretically and technically television may be feasible, commerciallyand financially I consider it an impossibility, a development of which we need waste little time dreaming.

- Lee De Forest
  In the NewYork Times.

Let's face it, there are no plain women on television.

- Anna Ford
  In the Observer, 23 Sep.

Just as the camera draws a stake through the heart of serious portraiture, television has killed the novel of social reportage.

-Jonathan Franzen
  How to Be Alone. English writer, best known for her historical biographies.

Fact is stranger than fiction.You see people walking down the street that would never be allowed on television.You have to tone it down.

- Ricky Gervais
  On the  Jo Whiley show, BBC Radio1, 30 Sep.

Masturbation is the thinking man's television.

- Christopher Hampton
  The Philanthropist.

Television has brought back murder into the home where it belongs.

- SirAlfred Joseph Hitchcock
  In the Observer,19 Dec.

It is largely on television and radio that real probing of what politicians are up to has to happen.

-John Humphrys
  The Devil's  Advocate.

Television brought the brutality of war into the comfort oftheliving room.Vietnamwaslost inthe living rooms of America, not on the battlefields of Vietnam.

- (Herbert) Marshall McLuhan
  Quoted in the Montreal Gazette, May.

Each daya few more lies eat into the seed with whichwe are born, little institutional lies from the print of newspapers, the shock waves of television, and the sentimental cheats of the movie screen.

- Norman Kingsley Mailer
  Advertisements for Myself,'First  Advertisement for Myself'.

The difference between writing a book and being on television is the difference between conceiving a child and having a baby made in a test tube.

- Norman Kingsley Mailer
  'The Siege of Mailer: Hero to Historian', in Village Voice, 21  Jan.

When television isgood, nothing isbetter.When it's bad, nothing is worse.

- Newton Norman Minow
  Speech to the National  Association of Broadcasters. Reported in the NewYork Times,10 May.

It's very nearly impossible to tell the truth in television.

- Malcolm Muggeridge
  Christ and the Media,'Questions following the 3rd lecture'.

Millions drew up before the international hearth of television.

-NewYorkTimes
  On international media coverage of the  Allied deadline for Iraq's withdrawalfrom Kuwait.'With Our Own Eyes', editorial, 24 Feb.

American people don't believe anything until they see it on television.

- Richard M(ilhous) Nixon
  In Newsweek, 2 May. He estimated that 80% of US citizens get their news from television.

Television has made dictatorship impossible, but democracy unbearable.

- S(ydney) J(oseph) Perelman
  In the FinancialTimes, 31 Jan.

Seldom is it given to one generation to have such an opportunity to rise again, but now before you is that opportunity in televisiona larger, richer, broader opportunity than ever existed in radio.

- David Sarnoff
c.1948  Speech to NBC station affiliates. Recalled on his death, 12 Dec1971.

Television has spread the habit of instant reaction and has stimulated the hope of instant results.

- Arthur M(eier),Jr Schlesinger
  In Newsweek, 6 Jul.

I make no apology for preoccupying myself with architecture, television, conceptual art, restaurants and Jane Asher's cakes.

-Will Self
Feeding Frenzy.