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

The line-by-line, sequential, continuous form of the printed page slowly began to lose its resonance as a metaphor of how knowledge was to be acquired and how the world was to be understood. "Knowing" the facts took on a new meaning, for it did not imply that one understood implications, background, or connections. Telegraphic discourse permitted no time for historical perspectives and gave no priority to the qualitative. To the telegraph, intelligence meant knowing of lots of things, not knowing about them.

The idea of taking what people call the 'entertainment culture' as a focus of study, including historical perspective, is not a bad idea.

A metaphor is not an ornament. It is an organ of perception. Through metaphors, we see the world as one thing or another.

In Russia, writers with serious grievances are arrested, while in America they are merely featured on television talk shows, where all that is arrested is their development.

What the advertiser needs to know is not what is right about the product but what is wrong about the buyer.

The television commercial is not at all about the character of products to be consumed. It is about the character of the consumers of products. (128)