219 Quotes by Neil Postman

How often does it occur that information provided you on morning radio or television, or in the morning newspaper, causes you to alter your plans for the day, or to take some action you would not otherwise have taken, or provides insight into some problem you are required to solve?

Technopoly is a state of culture. It is also a state of mind. It consists in the deification of technology, which means that the culture seeks its authorization in technology, finds its satisfactions in technology, and takes its orders from technology.

In short, Orwell feared that what we hate will ruin us. Huxley feared that what we love will ruin us.

But to the modern mind, resonating with different media-metaphors, the truth in economics is believed to be best discovered and expressed in numbers. Perhaps it is.

There was a time when educators became famous for providing reasons for learning; now they become famous for inventing a method.

What is happening here is that television is altering the meaning of “being informed” by creating a species of information that might properly be called disinformation. I am using this word almost in the precise sense in which it is used by spies in the CIA or KGB.

Tocqueville remarks on this in Democracy in America. “An American,” he wrote, “cannot converse, but he can discuss, and his talk falls into a dissertation.

It means to uncover lies, confusions, and overgeneralizations, to detect abuses of logic and common sense.

One characteristic of those who live in a Technopoly is that they are largely unaware of both the origins and the effects of their technologies.