Top 100 American Television Quotes
#1. That happiness is to be attained through limitless material acquisition is denied by every religion and philosophy known to mankind, but is preached incessantly by every American television set.
Robert Neelly Bellah
#2. There's no mistaking the fact that some of the best longform fiction out there now is in American television. 'The Wire' and 'Deadwood' and 'The Sopranos.'
Kevin Barry
#3. Well, certainly I think American television is - that's proper TV.
Graham Norton
#4. I didn't watch a lot of American television growing up. I just liked to read a lot and watch movies - movies, movies, and more movies. My family used to make fun of me because I'd like every movie I saw.
Joss Whedon
#5. Even though I'm English, I've all my life been heavily exposed to American television and culture in general.
Dominic West
#6. I hope there's a window that opens in American television where the rest of the world is viewed in a less censored light. There is something about the world outside the United States that is not understood here - that seems threatening to Americans.
Rula Jebreal
#7. American television really is pathetic.
Brian Eno
#9. Rachael Ray is probably the most watched kitchen personality in the history of American television.
Bill Buford
#10. Both of our wars in Iraq were, on American television, largely bloodless.
Bruce Jackson
#11. Most of my life I was occupied with American television and American food. My ethnicity was my choice. It still is.
Isaac Mizrahi
#12. There's definitely a wave of Brits doing great work on American television, and I wouldn't mind being one of them!
Rob James-Collier
#13. What I can say that's different in American television ... in Britain, they wouldn't cancel something after a couple of episodes. In the States they would. They would just decide it's not working, take it off and put something else in on the fall schedule.
John Barrowman
#14. American television tends to move faster than European or U.K. television.
Jason Winston George
#15. African-Americans are not a monolithic group. So, we tend to talk about the black community, the black culture, the African-American television viewing audience, but there are just as many facets of us as there are other cultures.
Malcolm-Jamal Warner
#16. I was dreading all of the ghost stories of working on American television, not in the least, the length. In Britain, a series is six episodes of an hour drama, maybe sometimes eight, but never twenty-two, so I was petrified of that.
Lennie James
#17. American television constantly tries to co-op British comedy and create their own version of it. Most of the time it doesn't work; obviously, in the case of 'The Office,' it did. But a lot of times, it doesn't really work.
Chris Hardwick
#18. Ratings to me are a little like the Chinese Government. I don't fully understand what makes a rating go. I don't know what makes the American television audience respond to one person and not t another. There very seldom are great differences between many television personalities.
Tom Brokaw
#19. The best of American television is thought-provoking, original, brilliant, exciting - from 'The Sopranos' on, whether it's 'The Wire' or 'Breaking Bad' or 'House of Cards,' they're fantastic pieces of art.
Martin Freeman
#20. I make my living doing freelance directing for North American television shot in Toronto, series like Alfred Hitchcock Presents, Twilight Zone, and so forth.
Atom Egoyan
#21. When you have the first show set in India on American television, there's gonna be a Nervous Nellie kind of vibe.
Parvesh Cheena
#22. I grew up watching a lot of American television and so the American sound has been in my psyche somehow for a long time and is quite familiar and so that does make it easier.
Toni Collette
#24. It's the open ocean right now because it's so unique. It's a really unique way of doing American television. There are a million possibilities. We can stay with the cops. We can introduce new worlds. And, who knows where it will end.
Veena Sud
#25. My mom and dad were divorced, and although they got along very well, my mom thought American television was reprehensible, so I was raised on the BBC. I kind of agreed with her. We watched American news, though.
Joss Whedon
#26. 'Heroes', 'Desperate Housewives', 'The Sopranos' - they're all very stylised. 'The Wire' is much more rooted in realism and honesty. In American television, I can't think of anything I'd rather have been in because it has got something to say and that is the kind of thing I want to do.
Aidan Gillen
#27. American television is very much created by the writers, just the volume of it. The writers are so key. You're just trying to do something that serves that script. And in general, film isn't all about the script, really.
Richard Ayoade
#28. I think American television changed world television in its reinvention of the series.
Julian Fellowes
#29. The glory of American television is Dennis Franz.
Hugh Laurie
#30. I wanted to branch out into American television, specifically because you get to develop a character for a longer period of time and you get to develop a relationship with the audience.
Joseph Morgan
#31. The standardization of world culture, with local popular or traditional forms driven out or dumbed down to make way for American television, American music, food, clothes and films, has been seen by many as the very heart of globalization.
Fredric Jameson
#32. Laughter on American television has taken the place of the chorus in Greek tragedy. It is unrelenting; the news, the stock-exchange reports, and the weather forecast are about the only things spared.
Jean Baudrillard
#33. By the twelfth day of his fast, Raju himself has become a tourist attraction. Before an enormous crowd and an American television crew, the starving man is helped down to the drought-stricken river to pray:
R.K. Narayan
#34. I'm not seeing tough questions asked on American television. I'm not seeing those correspondents that would question those in power. It's like a club. We are not asking the tough questions.
Jorge Ramos
#35. The average American child, by age eighteen, is estimated to have seen eighteen thousand murders and two hundred thousand acts of violence on television. The "death play" of popular video games is accelerating these numbers to ever-higher levels.
Richard J. Borden
#36. Violent video games played in public places are a tiny fraction of the media violence to which modern American children are exposed. Tiny - and judging from the record of this case not very violent compared to what is available to children on television and in movie theaters today.
Richard Posner
#37. I did not see myself as a leading lady. I thought I was really funny-looking and I would never be the lead, and I certainly would never do film or television. I wanted to do theater. I wanted to be the grand dame of the American stage.
Kathy Baker
#38. For thousands and thousands of American kids, libraries are the only safe place they can find to study, a haven free from the dangers of street or the numbing temptations of television. As schools cut back services, the library looms even more important to countless children.
Scott Turow
#39. In the film industry, all the money is focused on television and the stupidity of American cinema.
Gerard Depardieu
#40. Even in Australia I'd say 80 percent of our television was American. I grew up watching Alfred Hitchcock Presents and The Twilight Zone. I used to sit with my mum when I was just nine years old, trying to guess what the twist would be. I love that kind of thing.
Jacki Weaver
#41. I've never understood the cult of Hitchcock. Particularly the late American movies ... Egotism and laziness. And they're all lit like television shows.
Orson Welles
#42. I'm used to American actors who have a movie career thinking television acting is beneath them.
Alan Ball
#43. When I'm on television, I'm talking to millions of people, so the conversation is totally different. My words are different. My diction is different because now I'm really talking American English and not homeboy English.
Keyshawn Johnson
#44. I've been watching American baseball on television for a long time, but it was only in recent years that, realistically, I've been thinking about playing here.
Hideki Matsui
#45. I think there's a lot of anesthesia being - that's been pumped into American culture, the mass media television, various forms of entertainment, and the illusion of wealth that we now understand to be an illusion as well as the illusion that America is a world power.
Parker Palmer
#46. For a subject worked and reworked so often in novels, motion pictures, and television, American Indians remain probably the least understood and most misunderstood Americans of us all.
John F. Kennedy
#47. I have heard Mr. Romney's speech's many times on television and the radio and I have even read his book No Apology: The Case for American Greatness and I must say that out of all the gentleman running for the presidency Mr. Romney is, in my opinion, the best one to fit the bill.
Angela Lansbury
#48. Anyone who watches a lot of television, or listens to pop music, is familiar with a certain vision of America. If not exactly colorblind, this America is one in which different races easily interact, in which a white person might have an Asian boss, Hispanic stepson, or African-American frenemy.
Wesley Morris
#49. Television's escapist programming naturally continues to endorse living beyond one's means as the time-tested American Way and rarely depicts families or individuals wracked by the pressures and miseries that come with excess.
Tom Shales
#50. When I began to think about the head of the family, the storyteller, the rise of television which became the new storyteller, the break-up of the American family as an idea and then Avalon came.
Barry Levinson
#51. In general, it's not too hard to corrupt an American, mostly a matter of supply to their demand. Supply should be variegated to encourage the Illusion of Choice. Other than that they're looking for numbness, so be ready to sedate. Drugs, booze, television, shopping, etc ...
Geoffrey Wood
#52. When you decide you want to become a television writer, you naively assume it's going to be like the writers on the old 'Dick Van Dyke Show.' You'll write something and they'll just put it on TV. But what you quickly discover is that American network television is television by committee.
Jeffrey Klarik
#53. Amount of time an American child spends watching television, annually: 1,500 hours. Amount of time an American child spends in school, annually: 900 hours.
Peter Strupp
#54. I guess probably in my time in politics, it continued to be affirmed to me that the African-American community, despite being subscription television's most valuable customers, they are very underserved by cable and satellite television programming options.
J. C. Watts
#55. In its effect on family relationships, in its facilitation of parental withdrawal from an active role in the socialization of their children, and in its replacement of family rituals and special events, television has played an important role in the disintegration of the American family.
Marie Winn
#56. Playing a positive role on a network television show, it was great. I took it as a responsibility. Poncherello was supposed to be Poncherelli, and then when I got this part I said, 'You know what, this guy isn't going to be Italian-American, he's gonna be Hispanic American.' And they went with it.
Erik Estrada
#57. When people see the terrible scenes of violence on television, when we mourn the death of each and every American man and woman in uniform or a civilian that's killed, that it's hard to see the progress that's being made and it's hard to believe that this is all going to come out for the better.
Condoleezza Rice
#58. We cannot negotiate with people who say what's mine is mine and what's yours is negotiable.
[ The Berlin Crisis: Radio and Television Address to the American People (The White House, July 25, 1961)]
John F. Kennedy
#59. My parents found what I was interested in and encouraged me. They didn't put me in front of a television and buy lots of toys, the way some American parents do.
Nastassja Kinski
#60. The biggest police gun battle ever to take place on American soil had begun, and it was on live television. -
Jeffrey Toobin
#61. By ignoring a lot of American culture you can write more interesting stories. Unfortunately, if you were writing about America as it is, you'd be writing about a lot of people sitting in front of television sets.
Richard Russo
#62. Television is something the Russians invented to destroy American education.
Paul Erdos
#63. When was the last time you bought an American-made radio or television? If you're Gen X or younger, the answer is 'never.' Does the label on that shirt or skirt you're wearing say 'Made in the U.S.A.'? If so, you probably got it at Goodwill, or maybe at a Smithsonian garage sale.
Seth Shostak
#64. Like television, motion pictures, and computers, [Stephen] King has replaced reading ... the triumph of the genial King is a large emblem of the failures of American education.
Harold Bloom
#65. Television is like the American toaster, you push the button and the same thing pops up everytime.
Alfred Hitchcock
#66. Any writer who presents an American home today where the television is not the head of the family is living in a fantasy world.
Kurt Vonnegut
#67. That makes entertaining television. That is the circus of American Idol . We go for the very, very best and the very, very worst. It's the boring people that we don't want to see on television.
Nigel Lythgoe
#68. One week before my 17th birthday, I had a blind date with June Rose, a television actress on network soap operas, a model, and a regular on the popular Dick Clark's Saturday night 'American Bandstand' show from New York. We were married five years later, one week after my graduation from Columbia.
Robert C. Merton
#69. One of the reasons a strategist never sits in a stadium and gets caught up in the crowds - and never sits watching a debate in person - is because the vast majority of American voters watch these political events on television.
Ed Rollins
#70. The future of American film lies on television.
David Hare
#71. Television has changed the American child from an irresistable force to an immovable object.
Laurence J. Peter
#72. Most Australians who've got an ear can do an American accent because we grow up listening to them on television and in movies.
Jacki Weaver
#73. I consider the television set as the American fireplace, around which the whole family will gather.
Red Skelton
#74. As slavery died for the greater good of America, and the movement for equality sputtered to life, the white woman was on the cover of every American magazine. She was the dazzling jewel on every movie screen, the glory of every commercial and television show.
Jill Scott
#75. Once typecast as the indispensable altarpiece of a well-appointed living room, TVs have infected every human environment. The average American household has more television sets than people.
Seth Shostak
#76. I can think of nothing more boring for the American people than to have to sit in their living rooms for a whole half hour looking at my face on their television screens.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
#77. I would love to get a role that changes the landscape of being an African American woman in television and film.
Candice Patton
#78. In the U.K., we're surrounded by American accents. Anything we watch in television. We have 'How I Met Your Mother' and all these other shows here, so it's not something that's really alien to us.
Maisie Williams
#79. Since the reading skills of the American people are the lowest in the First World, the general public is always easy prey to manipulation by television.
Gore Vidal
#80. I used to watch a lot of American and British television as a child, which helped teach me the language and accents; it was partly that which landed me the part of Roxy in a London production of 'Chicago' when I was 25.
Birgitte Hjort Sorensen
#81. I really wanted to work in the American industry because it's the leading industry. It's where film and television started.
Jason Gann
#82. And I believe that public broadcasting has an important trust with the American people, it's an intimate medium of television, and that we can do reading and language development for young children without getting into human sexuality.
Margaret Spellings
#83. The average American watches more than four hours of television per day. What would happen if we spent more time developing our talents than watching others develop theirs?
John Bytheway
#84. When helicopters were snatching people from the grounds of the American embassy compound during the panic of the final Vietcong push into Saigon, I was sitting in front of the television set shouting, Get the chefs! Get the chefs!
Calvin Trillin
#85. I have done film, television and theatre - all at a pretty substantial level - I don't think it's possible for American actors to do that.
Helen Mirren
#86. Even if every program were educational and every advertisement bore the seal of approval of the American Dental Association, we would still have a critical problem. It's not just the programs but the act of watching television hour after hour after hour that's destructive.
Ellen Goodman
#88. In television, the audience has to be comfortable with you, and I've managed to prove that I can be in American homes to some degree, and not necessarily where everyone knows me, either.
Bruce Boxleitner
#89. The landscape is television has changed so much, because there are so many outlets, that the odds of getting a zeitgeisty hit - you know how 'American Idol' seems to appeal to every human being on the planet? Doing that in comedy nowadays is very, very hard.
Bill Lawrence
#90. One of the great upsides to a national book tour is the chance to break out of television's cocoon and interact directly with the American people.
Oliver North
#91. I was a child of American popular culture. All I did as a kid was what I could get at the local supermarket or the dime store. Nothing else was seen. Plus what was on television, or the movie theatre. That was it.
Robert Crumb
#92. MTV essentially killed 'American Bandstand' and 'Solid Gold,' because music videos are an easier way for pop artists to gain television exposure.
Don Cornelius
#93. The American child, driven to school by bus and stupefied by television, is losing contact with reality. There is an enormous gap between the sheer weight of the textbooks that he carries home from school and his capacity to interpret what is in them.
Marguerite Yourcenar
#94. I don't know of any American playwrights who earn the bulk of their living writing plays. Many of the older ones teach, while a growing number of younger ones write for series television.
Terry Teachout
#95. Television is now the dominant factor in the lives of too many American children.
Paul Weyrich
#96. Canadian cities looked the way American cities did on television.
William Gibson
#97. I am, when you stop to think of it, a member of a fairly select group: the final handful of American novelists who learned to read and write before they learned to eat a daily helping of video bullshit.
Stephen King
#98. The six and one-fourth hours' television watching (the American average per day) which non-reading children do is what is called alpha-level learning. The mind needn't make any pictures since the pictures are provided, so the mind cuts current as low as it can.
Carol Bly
#99. Each day, the American housewife turns toward television as toward a lover. She feels guilty about it, and well she might, for he's covered with warts and is only after her money.
Mignon McLaughlin
#100. Pro wrestling has always been ingrained into American culture. It was one of the first things that was ever on television, so everybody watched it.
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