A collection of quotes that pertain (loosely, in some cases) to television, the television industry, technology, or the creative process.

If you have more, please send them to webmaster@videonics.com. If you know the true source of one that is attributed to "unknown," please let me know. Corrections are also welcome.

As we add new quotes, they will appear at the top of the list so you'll be able to find what's new.

Note: Many of these quotations came from various quotation sources on the net.

Added February 28, 1996.

Sources for Marshall McLuhan quotes.

"You know, television was actually invented in the 1890s, but they
couldn't ge Color t it to work until the '40s when they came out with
gaffer tape."
Color -- Walter Pyle, CBS

"Remember when the B in NAB stood for Broadcaster?"
-- Michael Silbergleid, Television Broadcast

"There's so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy
in the streets?
-- Dick Cavett, mocking the TV-violence debate

"You are born, you live your life in torment and humiliation and
then you die...You need to watch television to distract yourself
from your miserable destiny."
-- Brother Theodore on Late Nite with David Letterman, urging
television boycotters in Farmington, CT to keep watching.

Added January 18, 1996.

"Television isn't a medium. It's a small."
-- Unknown

Added December 29, 1995.

"Dealing with network executives is like being nibbled to death by ducks."
--Eric Sevareid

"Television is the first truly democratic culture -- the first culture available
to everybody and entirely governed by what people want. The most terrifying
thing is what the people do want."
--Clive Barker

"Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if
you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some."
--Alfred Hitchcock

"Television has raised writing to a new low."
--Sam Goldwyn

"If Vaudeville had died, television was the box they put it in."
--Larry Gelbart

"The one function that TV news performs very well is that when there is
no news we give it to you with the same emphasis as if there were."
--David Brinkley

"Art is a moral passion married to entertainment. Moral passion without
entertainment is propaganda, and entertainment without moral passion is
television."
--Rita Mae Brown

Added November 21, 1995.

"Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same
thing pops up everytime."
-- Alfred Hitchcock

"Ultimate creativity is where the paint never dries and never smears. An
important aspect of a non-linear editing system is that it allows a producer
to 'go back to the way we had it at first' after two hours of experimenting."
-- Ralph Beisemeyer, Panasonic, in Videography, 8/95

"The success of the Video Toaster did for video what multiple fonts did for
desktop publishing: It gave people the technology to create ugly work!
--John Molinari, Data Translation, in Videography, 8/95

Added October 23, 1995.

"If you read a lot of books you are considered well read. But if you
watch a lot of TV, you're not considered well viewed."
-- Lily Tomlin

"The news is the one thing that the networks can point to with pride.
Everything else they do is crap -- and they know it."
-- Fred Friendly (1980)

"In the age of television, image becomes more important than substance."
-- S.I. Hayakawa

"Television is the bland leading the bland."
-- Murray Schumach

"It has always been my personal conviction that (Johnny) Carson is the
most overrated amateur since Evelyn and her Magic Violin."
-- Rex Reed

"Is Connie Chung a real journalist or just a reenactment of one?"
-- Rolling Stone (1990)

Added October 21, 1995.

"Educational television should be absolutely forbidden. It can only
lead to unreasonable disappointment when your child discovers that
the letters of the alphabet do not leap up and dance around with
royal-blue chickens."
-- Fran Lebowitz, Metropolitan Life, 1978, as quoted in "The Cynic's
Lexicon" by Jonathon Green; St. Martins Press; 1984

"Television is more interesting than people. If it were not, we should
have people standing in the corners of our rooms."
-- Alan Coren (1938- ) quoted in the Penguin Dictionary of Modern
Quotations, 1981

"Bill Gates is not necessarily so different from the rest of us. I went into
his den and his VCR is still flashing 12:00."
-- Jay Leno, introducing Gates at Windows 95 launch event.

"In a given installation there are never enough router x-points, patch
bay, or DA's."
-- Stu A. Casteel , 75501.3572@compuserve.com

"Television is great for the engineers. They deal with signal levels from
picowatts to megawatts, frequency range of DC to daylight, computers
and software that run the gamut of "mostly harmless" to downright user
hostile."
-- Stu A. Casteel , 75501.3572@compuserve.com

"When you have to eat crow, the fresher the better, and start with head
first, that way the feathers won't get stuck on the way down."
-- Stu A. Casteel , 75501.3572@compuserve.com

"...and this is where we spin gold into straw." (Introducing a
visitor to the KRON second floor newsroom)
-- Roy Trumbull

"The difference between an amateur and a professional is that
an amateur shows you ALL his pictures."
-- Unknown

"I never play the television. It's a curse, you know, television."
-- Peter Jennings

"Television is for appearing on, not looking at."
-- Noel Coward

"Inside every digital circuit, there's an analog signal
screaming to get out."
-- Al Kovalick, Hewlett-Packard

"If I can't picture it, I can't understand it."
-- Albert Einstein

"Theater is life. Film is art. Television is furniture."
-- Unknown, reported by Murray Wilson

"Television? The word is half Latin and half Greek.
No good can come of it."
-- C.P. Scott (1846-1932).

"Television is a gift of God, and God will hold those
who utilize his divine instrument accountable to him."
--Philo T. Farnsworth, television pioneer

"All television is children's television."
--Richard P. Adler

Television is an invention that permits you to be
entertained in your own living room by people you
wouldn't have in your home.
-- David Frost.

"The difference between professionals and amateurs is that
professionals know how to correct their mistakes and
amateurs don't make them."
-- Fred Alger

"Remember, its ONLY television!"
-- Sign outside KRPN TV production studios

"Quality television is a rare medium well done."
--PBS slogan

"The TV business ... is a cruel and shallow money trench,
a long plastic hallway where thieves and pimps run free
and good men die like dogs."
-- Hunter S. Thompson

"If you understand it, it's obsolete."
-- Mosaic Computer Inc.

"When the going gets weird, the weird turn pro".
-- Hunter Thompson

"Audio - The bastard stepchild of Televison"
-- Hans Schmid

"I never miss a chance to have sex or appear on television."
-- Gore Vidal

"Imitation is the sincerest form of television."
-- Fred Allen (1894-1956)

"I can think of nothing more boring for the American people
than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half
hour looking at my face on their television screens."
-- Dwight David Eisenhower (1890-1969)

"It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is
both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is
interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet
paper."
-- Rod Serling

"Experts are just trained dogs."
-- Albert Einstein

"Television enables you to be entertained in your home by
people you wouldn't have in your home."
-- David Frost

"Television - a medium. So called because it is neither rare
nor well-done."
-- Ernie Kovacs

"The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work or
daytime television."
-- Unknown

"We are drawn to our television sets each April the way we
are drawn to the scene of an accident."
-- Vincent Canby on the Academy Awards

"If it weren't for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of
television, we'd still be eating frozen radio dinners."
-- Johnny Carson

"I find television very educating. Every time somebody turns
on the set, I go into the other room and read a book."
-- Groucho Marx, 1890-1977

"Television has proved that people will look at anything
rather than each other."
-- Ann Landers

"The great thing about television is that if something
important happens anywhere in the world, day or night, you
can always change the channel."
-- From "Taxi"

"Fraternities have no SLACK, no matter how slack-jawed they
may appear. I taught elementary calculus here at the
University of SLACK for several years, and have observed
these folks carefully. Although some of them looked like
they had SLACK, it's clear to me that this was just the
result of not getting enough sleep after the puking contest.
I mean, those guys don't watch enough television to have
real SLACK."
-- William K Glunt (bud@ms.uky.edu)

"...public television is one of the most extravagant, over-
capitalized institutions in our society .. a huge national
conglomerate ... almost every one of the major local
stations in public television has an elaborate, state-of-
the-art, and very expensive production facility. Most ...
are scarcely used ... but there they are: costing money and
gathering dust."
-- C. M. Lichenstein, former Sr. VP, PBS

"I have a friend who just got back from the Soviet Union,
and told me the people there are hungry for information
about the West. He was asked about many things, but I will
give you two examples that are very revealing about life in
the Soviet Union. The first question he was asked was if we
had exploding television sets. You see, they have a problem
with the picture tubes on color television sets, and many
are exploding. They assumed we must be having problems with
the too. The other question he was asked often was why the
CIA had killed Samantha Smith, the little girl who visited
the Soviet Union a few years ago; their propaganda is very
effective."
-- Victor Belenko, MiG-25 fighter pilot who defected in 1976

"I turn on my television set. I see a young lady who goes
under the guise of being a Christian, known all over the
nation, dressed in skin-tight leather pants, shaking and
wiggling her hips to the beat and rhythm of the music as the
strobe lights beat their patterns across the stage and the
band plays the contemporary rock sound which cannot be
differentiated from songs by the Grateful Dead, the Beatles,
or anyone else. And you may try to tell me this is of God
and that it is leading people to Christ, but I
know better."
-- Jimmy Swaggart, hypocritical sexual pervert and TV
preacher, self-described

"If Ricky Schroder and Gary Coleman had a fight on
television with pool cues, who would win? 1) Ricky Schroder
2) Gary Coleman 3) The television viewing public"
-- David Letterman

"Life begins when you can spend your spare time programming
instead of watching television."
-- Cal Keegan

"The Nazis have no sense of humor, so why should they want
television?"
-- Philip K. Dick

"This isn't brain surgery; it's just television."
-- David Letterman

"Don't you wish there were a knob on the TV to turn up the
intelligence? There's one marked "Brightness," but it
doesn't work."
-- Gallagher

"MTV is the lava lamp of the 1980's."
-- Doug Ferrari

"TV is chewing gum for the eyes."
-- Frank Lloyd Wright

"The answers to life's problems aren't at the bottom of a
bottle: they're on TV!"
-- Homer Simpson

"One night I walked home very late and fell asleep in
somebody's satellite dish. My dreams were showing up on TV's
all over the world."
-- Steven Wright

"I put my air conditioner in backwards. It got cold outside.
The weatherman on TV was confused. "It was supposed to be
hot today."
-- Steven Wright

"All of the books in the world contain no more information
than is broadcast as video in a single large American city
in a single year. Not all bits have equal value."
-- Carl Sagan

"... The cable had passed us by; the dish was the only hope,
and eventually we were all forced to turn to it. By the
summer of '85, the valley had more satellite dishes per
capita than an Eskimo village on the north slope of Alaska.
Mine was one of the last to go in. I had been nervous from
the start about the hazards of too much input, which is a
very real problem with these things. Watching TV becomes a
full-time job when you can scan 200 channels all day and all
night and still have the option of punching Night Dreams
into the video machine, if the rest of the world seems
dull."
-- Hunter Thompson, "Full-time scrambling", _Generation of
Swine_

"... The important thing isn't so much *what* you want to
ban; it's the fact that you participate in the banning
process. That's what democracy is all about."
-- Dave Barry, What To Ban On Video, _Bad Habits_

"My VCR flashes 01:35, 01:35, 01:35, ..."
-- Steven Wright

"This is so antiseptic. It's empty. Why do you think this is
funny? You're going by audience reaction? This is an
audience that's raised on television, their standards
have been systematically lowered over the years. These guys
sit in front of their sets and the gamma rays eat the white
cells of their brains out!"
-- Isaac Davis in Manhattan (1979)

http://www.xmission.com:80/~mgm/quotes/search.html: Most useful quote source of all -- this searches several quote databases.

http://pubweb.ucdavis.edu/Documents/Quotations/homepage.html: LoQtus, a huge source of quotes.

http://fiction.isdn.uiuc.edu/quotes/: Quote of the week and index to other quote archives.

http://www.xmission.com:80/~mgm/quotes/: The Quotations Page: Yet another huge list of quotes.

http://www.cs.virginia.edu/~robins/quotes.html: Professional Robins' Quotes by Famous People

http://www.catalog.com/media/sd/quote.html: Favorite Quotes

http://www.columbia.edu/~svl2/bartlett/: Bartlett's Familiar Quotations at Columbia University. Searchable.

Media sage Marshall McLuhan is the richest single source of quotes on television. And the web is full of ways to tap his wisdom:

Marshall McLuhan Quote-O-Rama (reload for a different quote)

This site purports to answer the question, "Who was Marshall McLuhan?"

McLuhan speaks! Sound bites.

The McLuhan Probes is an electronic magazine in Portable Document Format (it requires the Adobe Acrobat Reader).

Content! This link-rich site contains one individual's (Tim Guay) synopsis and interpretation of what Marshall McLuhan said and why it might be relevant to everyone interested in the Internet.