Popular quotes about Television! Wisdom and inspiration are here!
The tough decisions that a president has to make in the Oval Office are in no way related to the capability of a person to do well on television. On the other hand, the capability of a person to project favorably on television enhances that person's odds of being elected so he can serve in the Oval Office. So you can't ignore the talents, one, to be very effective on television, and on the other hand, to be very effective as an operating president.
Gerald R. FordI think television has become such an interesting place for characters and for incredible storytelling. Half of what I watch are television shows that I've become obsessed with. I just think that it's opened up so much, to be such an interesting and creative medium, and so many wonderful directors and actors are moving to television because it is a great medium for telling stories and for creating a character over a long period of time.
Elijah WoodThere used to be a huge snobbism between the film industry and the television industry. I produced and acted in my first - well way back - but the first thing that I produced and acted in was Sarah, Plan and Tall. And the only place to go at the time for really quality television was Hallmark Hall of Fame. And think how much television has changed since then.
Glenn CloseTelevision is our culture's principal mode of knowing about itself. Therefore -- and this is the critical point -- how television stages the world becomes the model for how the world is properly to be staged. It is not merely that on the television screen entertainment is the metaphor for all discourse. It is that off the screen the same metaphor prevails. (92)
Neil PostmanNo one wanted to hire me. No newspaper, television station, television network that I worked for ever wanted to hire me.
Scott PelleySuch techniques, including meta-discursive stuff, self-reference, irony, black humor, cynicism, grotesquerie and shock, it would be safe to say that television or televisual values rule the culture. Television is successfully using a lot of those same techniques but using them for a very different agenda, which is to sort of create an ethos and please people and to sell products to consumers.
David Foster WallaceI started to work in television for three or four years, in 1954. There was one channel of television, black and white. But it could be entertaining and educational. During the evening they showed important plays, opera or Shakespeare's tragedies.
Umberto EcoOnce you have some sort of reputation in the outside world, they will try to woo you. They will say, "Won't you come and be on a talk program about books? That's not political." Then they can say to the outside world, "See how free it is, she appears on television. See how free it is." So I refused to have anything of mine read or dramatized on South African television.
Nadine GordimerI certainly don't feel there's a distinction to be made between a television and a film actor. I think there's a distinction between great actors and not so great actors. But I really think if you watch a person working in television give a wonderful performance, that person is f - ing great, because there is no time.
David OyelowoTelevision is so cool. Television is proving that we can be sophisticated and that people will watch, if it's good.
Jose PadilhaThere's a level of action unlike anything else on television. AMC always makes distinctive television and I think that certainly fits that requirement.
Miles MillarDaytime television, you can tell whoโs watching by the three kinds of commercials. Either itโs clinics for drying out drunks. Or itโs law firms who want to settle injury suits. Or itโs schools offering mail-order vocational degrees to make you a bookkeeper. A private detective. Or a locksmith. If youโre watching daytime television, this is your new demographic. Youโre a drunk. Or a cripple. Or an idiot.
Chuck PalahniukBut I never, never thought of the ministry nor did - of course, television when I was growing up, there was no television. So I didn't know anything about it.
Pat RobertsonWhen you're on the bus or subway or in your car, why busy your mind with all the garbage of advertisements? Why fill your mind with television and radio? Somehow you have to decide what your mind will receive. I don't mean you shouldn't ever go to movies or watch television, but control what enters your mind and heart. It's not just a question of pushing bad things out but also a question of holding on to something really good.
Henri NouwenIn my early thirties I was working in television as a researcher. I was really stuck for a period of five years. I got to TV when I was thirty. I hated being a music writer, and kept wondering why I couldn't be doing the exciting things that my friends were doing in television.
Mary HarronOne of the problems I see with these comics on television, particularly cable television, is, since you can say anything in terms of sex and scatological references and so on, therefore, you should do it. So they all limit themselves to these subjects and this vocabulary. My objection is that it is a lack of articulateness. Irreverence is easy, but what is hard is wit. Wit is what these comedians lack.
Tom LehrerI find with television, you have to play personality, whereas onstage, everyone talks about "the character," and what you do. It's a very different thing, because stage is much bigger, but on television, for things to come across to the public, I think you have to play a bit of your personality.
John BarrowmanI hope you are reading to your children, out loud. That's much better than watching television, much better. They won't get very much out of television except some bad thoughts.
Gordon B. HinckleyI think I've actually benefited from Australia being a kind of combination of both British and American culture. We kind of got the best of both British and American television and books, science fiction and fantasy, and so on. So I'm familiar with a lot of, for example, American books and television that a British author of my generation might not be.
Garth NixI love films, I love movies, I love television, I love television series, I love the internet, I love anything that enhances images. But most of all, I love, love movies.
Nicolas Winding RefnWhen I started out, I was a television writer, and we wrote a television show that was on live every week. And you didn't have the luxury of coming in and waiting to be inspired. You came in and you had to write. And you wrote, because it was going to be live on the air. So I can do that.
Woody AllenTrust me, the being-dead part is much easier than the dying part. If you can watch much television, then being dead will be a cinch. Actually, watching television and surfing the Internet are really excellent practice for being dead.
Chuck PalahniukIn Halberstram's fun house, television elected John F. Kennedy in 1960 (presumably Richard J. Daley and his precinct captains were at home on election night watching the Cook County ballots being counted on television).
Edwin DiamondThe repeat run of Fawlty Towers (BBC2) drew bigger audiences than ever and deservedly so. Statistical surveys reveal that only the television critic of the Spectator is incapable of seeing the joke, which is that Basil Fawlty has the wrong temperament to be a hotel proprietor, just as some other people have the wrong temperament to be television critics.
Clive JamesI believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision, we shall discover a new and unbearable disturbance of the modern peace, or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television - of that I am quite sure.
E. B. WhiteTelevision exposes the world to the accident. The world is exposed to accidents through television.
Paul VirilioI've always felt that improv looks and feels more clever when you're there to experience it live than when you have the degree of separation that television creates. Television raises expectations.
Alan ThickeIf your working television sits on top of your non-working television, you might be a redneck.
Jeff FoxworthyOh, you're in television! That's interesting. No, I mean, the word television is interesting. It's a hybrid, you see: tele- comes from the greek, and -vision comes from the latin. It should have been either "telerama", or "procolvision".
Graham ChapmanThe advertising marketplace is moving rapidly into digital videos. We know that by 2018 it is estimated that it will be a $12.2 billion business. We've been seeing the agencies combine their digital video spend with television spend and put it under one spend and just calling it "video." The pool of money is becoming much bigger. The comparisons between television and digital video are being made much more often because you can account for who's watching, you can't fast-forward through the commercials. There's a much more intimate relationship with someone watching digital video.
Dawn OstroffOnce in a while a good opportunity would come along, like the first 'Playhouse 90 ever to air - working in television afforded me my best opportunities. The (film) industry was going through such turmoil at the time - studios didn't know where to go anymore, they were falling apart, television was there. They didn't know what kind of films people wanted. The European films were making a huge impact because those films wanted real people in real situations.
Tab HunterMy father was invited to play on a television show when I was 17 or 18, that was an early equivalent of educational television. Sunday afternoon kind of variety art show.
John SebastianEd Simmons and I became stars in the emerging medium of television. We were new and fresh, just like TV at the time, so we automatically became 'THE' comedy writers for television.
Norman LearWhen I sign on to a television show, I have to love that show and character so much, but this [Mistresses] was in and out, for seven episodes. And it was nice to be able to make some money again because I hadn't work in a year and a half. There were a lot of pluses.
Shannyn SossamonI love the stage. It's terrifying in a way that film and television is not. When you're about to go out, and you're adrenaline just gets out of control, and that can be really daunting.
Stephen LangWhen the doors to television were opened to me, that was quite a surprise. It's been such a gift that there was so much TV and independent film happening in New York that I could be a part of. There was something to satiate my desire to be artistic and creative, especially when it wasn't in the way I originally thought it was going to be.
Aja Naomi KingI think the cartoons that they're children are watching, particularly 'The Simpsons,' they're OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That's not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.
Jerry LewisBilly was fascinated by the television. At its most basic level, it occupied his time and shut out the demons of isolation. This was another irony because, for so long, he had shunned the tube for a similar purpose-to prevent it from bombarding his brain with demons of banality. However, each time he turned the machine on, he began to discover a world of assorted delights, as well as gain insight into the insidious manner in which this medium was shaping the mass psyche. If nothing else, he learned there was nothing innocuous about it.
Jim CarrollLives with no more sense of spiritual meaning than that provided by shopping malls, ordinary television, and stagnant workplaces are barren lives indeed. Spirituality enriches culture.
Marianne WilliamsonThe films of The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar always seemed to me mere thin skims of the story lines, and I never did see a meager Hollywood caper called Youngblood Hawke, vaguely based on my 800-page novel. So it was that I opted for television, with its much broader time limits, for The Winds of War.
Herman WoukMost Australians who've got an ear can do an American accent because we grow up listening to them on television and in movies.
Jacki WeaverI do not watch television. But I'm in touch with the world. If anything really important happens, someone will tell me.
Nhat Hanh