The written word endures, the spoken word disappears Neil Postman More Quotes by Neil Postman More Quotes From Neil Postman 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 serious kind believe But in the end, science does not provide the answers most of us require. Its story of our origins and of our end is, to say the least, unsatisfactory. To the question, "How did it all begin?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." To the question, "How will it all end?", science answers, "Probably by an accident." And to many people, the accidental life is not worth living. Moreover, the science-god has no answer to the question, "Why are we here?" and, to the question, "What moral instructions do you give us?", the science-god maintains silence. Neil Postman god giving people TV serves us most usefully when presenting junk-entertainment; it serves us most ill when it co-opts serious modes of discourse - news, politics, science, education, commerce, religion. Neil Postman junk news entertainment We can make the trains run on time but if they are not going where we want them to go, why bother? Neil Postman bother want running 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 people thinking 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 Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching. Neil Postman television-watching skills television 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 views time children The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies. Neil Postman training study people 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 technology spiritual brain Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it. Neil Postman commodity entertainment information 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 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 judgement judging thinking 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 groups important school 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 excellence ideas We do not measure a culture by its output of undisguised trivialities but by what it claims as significant. Neil Postman significant claims culture You can only photograph a fragment of the here and now. The photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea. Neil Postman language world ideas Computers are merely ingenious devices to fulfill unimportant functions. The computer revolution is an explosion of nonsense. Neil Postman nonsense computer revolution 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 whales simple ideas An educated mind is practiced in the uses of reason, which inevitably leads to a skeptical outlook. Neil Postman use reason mind
