Neil Postman Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• I believe I am not mistaken in saying that Christianity is a demanding and serious religion. When it is delivered as easy and amusing, it is another kind of religion altogether.

  Neil Postman

  Believe, Serious, Kind

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.121, Penguin

  34 Copy quote

• The shock of twentieth-century technology numbed our brains and we are just beginning to notice the spiritual and social debris that our technology has strewn about us.

  Neil Postman

  Spiritual, Technology, Brain

  Neil Postman (2011). “The Disappearance of Childhood”, p.146, Vintage

  24 Copy quote

• You cannot avoid making judgements but you can become more conscious of the way in which you make them. This is critically important because once we judge someone or something we tend to stop thinking about them or it.

  Neil Postman

  Thinking, Judging, Judgement

  Neil Postman (2009). “Teaching As a Subversive Activity: A No-Holds-Barred Assault on Outdated Teaching Methods-with Dramatic and Practical Proposals on How Education Can Be Made Relevant to Today's World”, p.245, Delta

  21 Copy quote

• An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook.

  Neil Postman

  Mind, Use, Reason

  Neil Postman (2011). “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future”, p.164, Vintage

  18 Copy quote

• If politics is like show business, then the idea is not to pursue excellence, clarity or honesty but to appear as if you are, which is another matter altogether.

  Neil Postman

  Honesty, Ideas, Excellence

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.126, Penguin

  19 Copy quote

• The written word endures, the spoken word disappears

  Neil Postman

  Disappear, Endure, Spoken Word

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.21, Penguin

  12 Copy quote

• Technology always has unforeseen consequences, and it is not always clear, at the beginning, who or what will win, and who or what will lose.

  Neil Postman

  Winning, Technology, Clear

  "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". Book by Neil Postman, 1985.

  14 Copy quote

• For in the end, he was trying to tell us what afflicted the people in 'Brave New World' was not that they were laughing instead of thinking, but that they did not know what they were laughing about and why they had stopped thinking.

  Neil Postman

  Brave New World, Thinking, People

  7 Copy quote

• We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant.

  Neil Postman

  Culture, Significant, Claims

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.16, Penguin

  14 Copy quote

• Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?

  Neil Postman

  Laughter, Sea, Voice

  39 Copy quote

• When two human beings get together, they're co-present, there is built into it a certain responsibility we have for each other, and when people are co-present in family relationships and other relationships, that responsibility is there. You can't just turn off a person. On the Internet, you can.

  Neil Postman

  Responsibility, Two, People

  20 Copy quote

• Public schooling does not serve a public; it creates a pubic.

  Neil Postman

  Doe, Public School, Schooling

  14 Copy quote

• We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother?

  Neil Postman

  Running, Want, Bother

  Neil Postman (2011). “The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School”, p.61, Vintage

  21 Copy quote

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

  Neil Postman

  Needs, Buyers, Knows

  9 Copy quote

• The key to all fanatical beliefs is that they are self-confirming....(some beliefs are) fanatical not because they are "false", but because they are expressed in such a way that they can never be shown to be false.

  Neil Postman

  Keys, Self, Way

  "Crazy Talk, Stupid Talk : How We Defeat Ourselves by the Way We Talk and What to do About It" by Neil Postman, (p. 104), 1976.

  5 Copy quote

• The whole problem with news on television comes down to this: all the words uttered in an hour of news coverage could be printed on a page of a newspaper. And the world cannot be understood in one page.

  Neil Postman

  News, Television, World

  Neil Postman (2011). “Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education”, p.72, Vintage

  31 Copy quote

• School has never really been about individualized learning, but about how to be socialized as a citizen and as a human being, so that we, we have important rules in school, always emphasizing the fact that one is part of a group.

  Neil Postman

  School, Important, Groups

  16 Copy quote

• But it is much later in the game now, and ignorance of the score is inexcusable. To be unaware that a technology comes equipped with a program for social change, to maintain that technology is neutral, to make the assumption that technology is always a friend to culture is, at this late hour, stupidity plain and simple.

  Neil Postman

  Ignorance, Technology, Simple

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.130, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Children are the living messages we send to a time we will not see. From a biological point of view it is inconceivable that any culture will forget that it needs to reproduce itself. But it is quite possible for a culture to exist without a social idea of children. Unlike infancy, childhood is a social artifact, not a biological category.

  Neil Postman

  Time, Children, Views

  Neil Postman (2011). “The Disappearance of Childhood”, p.10, Vintage

  13 Copy quote

• I mean to suggest that without a transcendent and honorable purpose, schooling must reach its finish, and the sooner we are done with it, the better.

  Neil Postman

  Mean, Purpose, Done

  10 Copy quote

• People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?

  Neil Postman

  Book, Writing, People

  Neil Postman (2005). “Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business”, p.13, Penguin

  9 Copy quote

• Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense.

  Neil Postman

  Revolution, Computer, Nonsense

  Neil Postman (2011). “Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology”, p.156, Vintage

  16 Copy quote

• Certainty abolishes hope, and robs us of renewal.

  Neil Postman

  Renewal, Certainty, Abolish

  Neil Postman (2011). “Building a Bridge to the 18th Century: How the Past Can Improve Our Future”, p.124, Vintage

  10 Copy quote

• There is no escaping from ourselves. The human dilemma is as it has always been, and we solve nothing fundamental by cloaking ourselves in technological glory.

  Neil Postman

  Escaping, Fundamentals, Glory

  "Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business". Book by Neil Postman, 1985.

  26 Copy quote

• Television screens saturated with commercials promote the utopian and childish idea that all problems have fast, simple, and technological solutions. You must banish from your mind the naive but commonplace notion that commercials are about products. They are about products in the same sense that the story of Jonah is about the anatomy of whales.

  Neil Postman

  Simple, Ideas, Whales

  Neil Postman (2011). “Conscientious Objections: Stirring Up Trouble About Language, Technology and Education”, p.113, Vintage

  11 Copy quote

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