219 Quotes by Neil Postman

Naturally, bureaucrats can be expected to embrace a technology that helps to create the illusion that decisions are not under their control. Because of its seeming intelligence and impartiality, a computer has an almost magical tendency to direct attention away from the people in charge of bureaucratic functions and toward itself, as if the computer were the true source of authority. A bureaucrat armed with a computer is the unacknowledged legislator of our age, and a terrible burden to bear.

The idea of taking what people call the ‘entertainment culture’ as a focus of study, including historical perspective, is not a bad idea.

We may have reached the point where cosmetics has replaced ideology as the field of expertise over which a politician must have competent control.

We believe there are certain things people “have,” certain things people “do,” and even certain things people “are.” These beliefs do not necessarily reflect the structure of reality they simply reflect an habitual way of talking about reality.

The written word endures, the spoken word disappears.

Indeed, I hope to persuade you that the decline of a print-based epistemology and the accompanying rise of a television-based epistemology has had grave consequences for public life, that we are getting sillier by the minute.

An opinion is not a momentary thing but a process of thinking, shaped by the continuous acquisition of knowledge and the activity of questioning, discussion, and debate.

As Thoreau implied, telegraphy made relevance irrelevant.

That is why a good reader does not cheer an apt sentence or pause to applaud even an inspired paragraph. Analytic thought is too busy for that, and too detached.