219 Quotes by Neil Postman

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

Remember: in order for a perception to change one must be frustrated in one's actions or change one's purpose.

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.

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.

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

Because he did not have time to read every new book in his field, the great Polish anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski used a simple and efficient method of deciding which ones were worth his attention: Upon receiving a new book, he immediately checked the index to see if his name was cited, and how often. The more Malinowski the more compelling the book. No Malinowski, and he doubted the subject of the book was anthropology at all.

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

The making of adaptable, curious, open, questioning people has nothing to do with vocational training and everything to do with humanistic and scientific studies.

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.