Dumbing Down Quotes

• The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

  Carl Sagan

  Ignorance, Media, Sound

  Carl Sagan (2011). “Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark”, p.49, Ballantine Books

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• The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance.

  Carl Sagan

  Ignorance, America, Decay

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• True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily "dumbing down."

  Isaac Asimov

  Education, Art, Learning

  "It's Been a Good Life".

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• The dumbing down of the country reflects itself on Broadway. The shows get dumber, and the public gets used to them.

  Stephen Sondheim

  Country, Broadway, Used

  "Maestro of Broadway". Academy of Achievement Interview, www.achievement.org. July 5, 2005.

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• I'm generally pessimistic about the dumbing down of America - especially with summer movies.

  Elmer Bernstein

  Summer, America, Pessimistic

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• Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, is really about you.

  Denis Dutton

  Art, Self Esteem, Museums

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• The big problem in the long process of dumbing down the schools is that you can reach a point of no return. How are parents who never received a decent education themselves to recognize that their children are not getting a decent education?

  Thomas Sowell

  Children, School, Long

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• The ability to convince people of the wackiest notions - and both parties can do it - it's part of the dumbing down of America that's really highly problematic.

  Gary Ackerman

  Party, America, People

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• If we are going to compete in this world we're in today, there is no possible way we can do it with lowering expectations and dumbing down everything. Children are going to suffer and families' hearts are going to be broken that their kids won't be able to get a job in the 21st Century.

  Jeb Bush

  Jobs, Children, Heart

  Jeb Bush at GOP primary debate in Cleveland, Ohio, www.washingtonpost.com. August 6, 2015.

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• Popular culture, on average, has been growing more cognitively challenging over the past thirty years, not less. Despite everything you hear about declining standards and dumbing-down, you have to do more intellectual work to make sense of today's television or games - much less the internet - than you did a few decades ago.

  Steven Johnson

  Past, Average, Years

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• Those of us with a microphone who are blessed with the gift of being in the public eye have a special opportunity to give voice to all those groups whose activism is sometimes ignored or put on the back pages with the the dumbing down of television and the tabloidization of journalism. As Ralph Nader called it, "sound barks," not even sound bites.

  Bonnie Raitt

  Blessed, Eye, Opportunity

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• Everything in television is dumbing down even further and it won't stop until somebody dies.

  Robin Leach

  Television, Dies

  Source: www.cyinterview.com

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• Everybody is in your business, gossiping and being mean spirited. It's different. Sometimes I'm like, "Do I want to do this?," because it's not about the art anymore. It's a struggle. There's part of me that wants to share my gift, which is art, and if I don't, am I taking away something that the Creator gave me to share? At the same time, I don't want to be a part of feeding the dumbing down of society.

  Tinsel Korey

  Art, Struggle, Mean

  Source: collider.com

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• I hate to say it, but there seems to have been some sort of dumbing down as far as movies go.

  Sam Neill

  Hate, Has Beens, Seems

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• You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met.

  John Cleese

  Down And, Months, Mets

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

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• In Britain, we've tended to replace the kind of architectural culture valued in much of Europe with an in-flight magazine lifestyle - all branding, marketing and 'accessibility', a word that usually means dumbing-down.

  David Chipperfield

  Mean, Europe, Marketing

  "David Chipperfield: perfect harmony" by Jonathan Glancey, www.theguardian.com. February 3, 2010.

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• And I can see that everything about this God has been purposely designed to poison our experience of life on earth, not to enhance it, to keep us fearful, to suppress knowledge, to curtail freedom and creativity, and to celebrate death. It's nothing less than the sanctified dumbing-down of the human race. And demanding respect for it is frankly an insult that deserves to be repaid with considerable interest.

  Pat Condell

  Fear, Creativity, Race

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• 

  People are always talking about the dumbing down of the country.

  Woody Allen

  Country, Talking, People

  "In Conversation: Woody Allen". NewYork Interview, nymag.com.

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• Advocates of dumbing down should note the wonderfully perverse fact that 'University Challenge' and 'Mastermind' were watched by millions who could hardly even understand the questions, let alone ejaculate the answers. Maybe they just liked to watch smart people sweating.

  Declan Lynch

  Smart, People, Challenges

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• Many people who I respected were disappointed when I started 'Wine Library TV.' They thought I was dumbing down wine, but I always knew I was one of the biggest producers of new wine drinkers in the world, and people are realizing it now.

  Gary Vaynerchuk

  Wine, People, Library

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• No one can know how long this dumbing-down of American religion will persist. But so long as it does, citizens should probably be more vigilant about policing the public square, not less so. . . . [Y]ou cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among religious believers. That remains true today, both in Baghdad and in Baton Rouge.

  Mark Lilla

  Religious, Squares, Long

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• At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater.

  Diane Paulus

  Mean, Voice, Giving

  "Biography/ Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• A secular approach is not a dumbing down, it's not reductively identifying Buddhism with one or two particular techniques of meditation, but it is actually a complete world view and way of life in this world.

  Stephen Batchelor

  Buddhism, Two, Views

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