Quotes About Television

The things the writers have me doing on 'Suburgatory' are insane. I think they think it's easier to ask for forgiveness than permission.

There is nothing unusual about such noise. Chances are that if you happen to read this some years later, and turn on the television, you will see a couple of fresh, new controversies—with a lot of debating, pontificating, finger-pointing, outrage and no problem-solving.

Just as people gather on the road to see a fistfight, India gathers at night to watch TV debates.

Time has convinced me of one thing. Television is for appearing on, not looking at.

The human race is faced with a cruel choice: work, or daytime television.

I suppose I should get a VCR, but the only thing I like about television is its ephemerality.

The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading.

Theatre is life. Cinema is art. Television is furniture.

I have long thought, and still think, that radio is magic. Television is OK, but radio is magic. If television had been invented first and then radio had come along, people would think, "What a wonderful thing this radio is! It's like television except you don't have to look at it!"

I 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 either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television — of that I am quite sure.

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

I wasn't satisfied with "Stuart Little" on TV, but I didn't expect to be... It is the fixed purpose of television and motion pictures to scrap the author, sink him without a trace, on the theory that he is incompetent, has never read his own stuff, is not responsible for anything he ever wrote, and wouldn't know what to do about it even if he were.

I could have been a doctor, but there were too many good shows on TV.

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

Television brings us to another accusation I should like to refute. We often hear the criticism that there is too much violence. Screen producers need not be told that television violence is very much like an iceberg. Only a small fraction of it is visible on the screen. The public should see what goes on behind the scenes.

But the point is that one of television's greatest contributions is that it brought murder back into the home where it belongs. Seeing a murder on television can be good therapy. It can help work off one's antagonism. And, if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.

Sex on television can't hurt you unless you fall off.

Saturday Night Live

Grandmother: A babysitter who watches the kids instead of the television set.

Never trust anyone whose television is larger than their bookshelf.

Parents have to realize that there is a stranger in your house. If you came home and you found a strange man… teaching your kids to punch each other, or trying to sell them all kinds of products, you'd kick him right out of the house. But here you are — you come in and the TV is on, and you don't think twice about it.

In general, they refused to eat anything that hadn't danced on TV.

So after this is all over, do the producers of My 600 Pound Life find me or do I need to find them?

I had an attitude about some work, like television sitcoms. It was selling your soul.