Top 100 Quotes About Television Watching
#1. Watching television requires no skills and develops no skills. That is why there is no such thing as remedial television-watching.
Neil Postman
#2. Reading not only enlarges and challenges the mind; it also engages and exercises the brain. Today's youth who sits mesmerized by a television screen is not going to be tomorrow's leader. Television watching is passive. Reading is active.
Richard M. Nixon
#3. I like the Sci Fi channel and 'Science Fiction Theatre.' I've been doing a lot of television-watching and thinking about good songs to write.
Roky Erickson
#4. [An audience conditioned by a lifetime of television-watching is so corrupted that] their standards have been systematically lowered over the years. These guys sit in front of their sets and the gamma rays eat the white cells of their brains out!
Woody Allen
#5. I was always singing and dancing for my mother when I wasn't glued to the television watching I Love Lucy or the Carol Burnett Show.
Debra Messing
#6. Sitcoms always made the most sense to me. I grew up watching them every day with my dad. Every Monday, Tuesday night, we would be sitting in front of the television watching any kind of sitcom. I connect with that more, but I love to do whatever kind of role.
Hayley Orrantia
#7. Again and again parents describe ... the trancelike nature of their children's television watching. The child's facial expression is transformed. The jaw is relaxed and hangs open slightly; the tongue rests on the front teeth. The eyes have a glazed, vacuous look.
Marie Winn
#8. Television watching does reduce reading and often encroaches on homework. Much of it is admittedly the intellectual equivalent of junk food. But in some respects, such as its use of standard written English, television watching is acculturative.
Edward Hirsch
#9. Television watching should more properly be called television staring; it engages eye and ear simultaneously in a relentless and persistent way and leaves no room for daydreaming. This is what makes watching such an inferior form of leisure
Witold Rybczynski
#10. 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
#11. I remember watching television when I was younger, and I felt like there were things TV tackled first, and then it would happen to me in real life, and I felt prepared.
Bresha Webb
#12. If you're watching a comedian on television and he's making a political point, I would say he's gotten too serious.
Norm MacDonald
#13. I think that's the problem with kids now. Everything is manufactured. And then they're sitting there watching the television, where all the work is done for them. Radio made me use my imagination.
Terry Gilliam
#14. My first serious girlfriend, when I was 16, was Mormon. I went to her house for 'family home evening,' and I was like, 'Why aren't you people ignoring each other and watching television?'
Trey Parker
#15. Once you start watching a television show that you love you can't stop watching it.
Ludacris
#16. It will be like watching one of her own dreams on television. Some vast and deeply personal insult to any ordinary notion of interiority.
An experience outside culture.
William Gibson
#17. If you really think about it, when watching television, you have product placement all the time.
Jay Chiat
#18. This whole thing about reality television to me is really indicative of America saying we're not satisfied just watching television, we want to star in our own TV shows. We want you to discover us and put us in your own TV show, and we want television to be about us, finally.
Steven Spielberg
#19. You get to that age where you're watching a lot of television, and who doesn't want to be on television?
Jason Marsden
#20. I grew up watching movies on television and computer screens. They affected me just as powerfully in the small private space.
Rick Alverson
#22. I think it's an important thing for a Mexican to say, especially now with the rebellion in Chiapas. Mexico has to confront her Indian face, and yet she refuses to do so. When you turn on Mexican television, it's like watching Swedish TV: everyone is blond.
Richard Rodriguez
#23. In general, watching children's television is a dark and surreal descent into madness where the characters on the screen talk directly to you.
John Green
#24. You have a time machine and you use it for ... watching television?"
"Well, I wouldn't use it at all if I could get the hang of the video recorder.
Douglas Adams
#25. I used to write stories a lot because you had to fill your hours some other way than watching television. So my imagination was vivid, and I used to write a lot of stories. I wrote a novel, which I still have, which is so awful.
Robert Osborne
#26. It was found that the more often people report reading books, the more flow experiences they claim to have, while the opposite trend was found for watching television.
Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
#27. 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
#28. As I got older, I never considered that tons of people were watching me on television every week. I give a nod to my parents for keeping me as normal as I could be in an un-normal adult world.
Angela Cartwright
#29. Hell no / I ain't going to go / Clean out my cell / And take my tail / To jail / Without bail / Because it's better there eating / Watching television fed / Than in Vietnam with your white folks dead.
Muhammad Ali
#30. So, I come here to check on you and low and behold you're here. I wasted an entire night in Miranda's backyard when I could've been ratting food in your kitchen and watching the bad ass Chuck Bass on the television screen.
Abbi Glines
#31. My father was sleepless most of his life. So by the age of five, I was awake with him all night long, watching bad television or we'd lie in the same bed, and I'd read my comic books while he read his latest spy or mystery novel.
Sherman Alexie
#32. McLuhanism and the media have broken the back of the book business; they've freed people from the shame of not reading. They've rationalized becoming stupid and watching television.
Pauline Kael
#33. My first Top of the Pops I didn't want to do. I was terrified. I'd never done television before. Seeing the video afterwards was like watching myself die.
Kate Bush
#34. My friends and I would get up early and take our horses through the national forest. My mom was very free. It was always 'Out of the house!' There was no watching television on weekends.
Anna Torv
#35. 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
#36. I don't trust novels with points, do you? If a novel is only about a point, the writer should just say it in as few words as possible so we can take it in and go back to watching 'The Bachelor' on television.
William Lashner
#37. I think the cartoons that they're children are watching, particularly 'The Simpsons,' they're OK. I think that the adult audience is making much too much of the danger that they imply. That's not the case. The danger for children today, honey, is the news. Keep them away from news on television.
Jerry Lewis
#38. More people are watching college football on Snapchat than they are on television.
Evan Spiegel
#39. People who don't have gender dysphoria aren't going to catch it by watching me dance on television.
Chaz Bono
#40. Having been in football all my life as a player and a coach and having been on the sideline, I think the closer we can get to bringing people what it's like standing and watching the game on the sideline, with a better view, would be the perfect situation for television football.
John Madden
#41. Television viewers, they've been around a long time. They've been watching this thing now for 50 years. I mean, they know exactly what's happening when it comes to television programming. You can't put anything over on them anymore.
Maury Povich
#42. I'd like us to deliver a little message to all the men still out there who think it's the '50s, and coming home simply means watching television with a beer.
Patricia Richardson
#43. Viewers can't work or play while watching television; they can't read; they can't be out on the streets, falling in love with the wrong people, learning how to quarrel and compromise with other human beings. In short, they are asocial.
Pete Hamill
#44. We don't get too nervous for too may things, but on television a few million people are sitting there watching. Definitely a lot more nerves.
Dave Haywood
#45. I don't think you can read poetry while you're watching television very well.
Edward Hirsch
#46. The problem is these days people don't watch television together. The husband is downstairs watching The Game and the wife is upstairs watching The Good Wife. They don't need a show they can watch together. What family dramas are on now that are working?
Warren Leight
#47. I don't do a television show for awards. You make it so people will enjoy watching it.
Sarah Michelle Gellar
#48. Sometimes it's like watching a train wreck. You're uncomfortable, but you just can't help yourself. Some of those so-called bad interviews actually turned into compelling television.
Tony Danza
#49. I know I'm an actor, but I'm not at all a believer in people watching a lot of TV. I've never had television in my home.
Alexandra Paul
#50. The thing that I love about television there are no more than two or three people watching you at a time. If there are more than two or three people in a room they're talking to each other, they're not listening to you.
Betty White
#51. When you watch television, you never see people watching television. We love television because it brings us a world in which television does not exist.
Barbara Ehrenreich
#52. I love acting. Acting's always been my first love. I grew up watching multi-camera television shows ... And I thought I would absolutely be in for that.
Seth Green
#53. I stopped watching television like a fiend once I got into college.
Jane Lynch
#54. I've been trying to figure out what moment The Lone Ranger came into our lives. We've always just known about The Lone Ranger. It's common knowledge. I don't ever remember watching the television show.
James Badge Dale
#55. I liked you better when you had vordo." "You're not suggesting we do it in this tiny closet with two men watching television in the next room, are you?" "It'd be limiting," Ranger said, "but at least you wouldn't have your ass on the horn.
Janet Evanovich
#56. Once upon a time, Isola Wilde was watching late-night television with her eldest brother, Alejandro, when Channel 12 broadcast a live suicide.
Allyse Near
#57. We must, together as a nation, stop watching Fox.
Jon Stewart
#58. In 1962 I was 17, so I was definitely watching the dance shows on television.
Micky Dolenz
#59. If there's anything unsettling to the stomach, it's watching actors on television talk about their personal lives.
Marlon Brando
#60. Others may prefer mindless entertainment, but on Sunday nights, you'll find me parked right in front of my television, munching popcorn and improving my intellect by watching 'Masterpiece Classic.'
Teresa Medeiros
#61. All [tv] shows are like cigarettes. You watch two, you have a higher chance of watching three. They're all addictive.
Dan Harmon
#62. All I wanted to do was go back inside to the library and read a book.I used to spend all my time reading books, or watching television. It was safe. Nobody ever was hurt or teased or looked stupid while reading books or watching television.
Kathryn Magendie
#63. I don't like going to football games. I like watching them on television. When you go to a game, it's hard to focus. There's so much going on, and it's cold. I'd rather sit and watch it and get replays and commentary.
John Legend
#64. There is a mass of people, we might as well admit, who if they weren't watching television, would be doing absolutely nothing else.
Bennett Cerf
#65. It felt like being in the center of the world, and I felt like I was a witness to history and I knew that the whole world was watching on television. So, I could feel the collective consciousness of the world focused on this little strip of land called Seattle.
Krist Novoselic
#66. I am suggesting that we spend a little less time in idleness, in the fruitless pursuit of watching inane and empty television programs. Time so utilized can be put to better advantage, and the consequences will be wonderful.
Gordon B. Hinckley
#67. Had Ben grown up in the old world, Ethan would probably have entered his son's bedroom to find him glued to an iPhone. Texting friends. Watching television. Playing video games. Twitter and Facebook. Ethan didn't miss those things.
Anonymous
#68. I turned on Fox News and jumped when I saw that they had one of those things in their studio. "Are you people crazy?" I screamed at the television. "Get out of there. Somebody shoot it!" Then I realized I was watching Special Report and had mistaken Charles Krauthammer for a zombie.
Ian McClellan
#69. I watch movies, and if I get the chance to watch television, I'm usually prone to watching something completely mindless and mundane that I don't have to follow so closely.
Billy Burke
#70. I'd love to star in a television series of my own. I love the idea of living with a character for a number of years, watching him grow.
Michael Dorn
#71. 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
#72. As a side effect of modern warfare, we had the peculiar privilege of watching the destruction of our country on television.
Sara Novic
#73. What if I like watching television? What if I don't want to do much else other than read a book? ... What if I'm tired when I get home? What if I don't fill my days with frenetic activity?"
"But one day you might wish you had
Jojo Moyes
#74. I think they need to get a more reliable way of watching television on the laptop. Because I travel so much, if I want to watch my favorite sports team it might not be showing in that place, so I want a reliable way to watch whatever I want to watch on my laptop.
John Legend
#75. If people are watching television by themselves, it makes them part of a community of people laughing.
Barbara Feldon
#76. I find that if I'm watching somebody upon television or in a movie that is on a window ledge or in some high precarious position my hand starts sweating and I get that crawling feeling in the soles of my feet.
Alan Moore
#77. Television masturbates its audience even though the audience is not really watching. It masturbates orifices the audience doesn't have. It sticks holes in the viewer and masturbates in those holes. Then it finally gets into the brain and masturbates there, too.
James Purdy
#78. I met Will Smith twice. I didn't talk to him for too long but I was trying to let him know that my age group grew up watching him - he was the coolest guy on television and the coolest guy in movies.
J. Cole
#79. Chilling out on the bed in your hotel room watching television, while wearing your own pajamas, is sometimes the best part of a vacation.
Laura Marano
#80. There are few things quite so effortlessly enjoyable as watching an eminent person getting in a huff and flouncing out of a television interview, often with microphone trailing.
Craig Brown
#81. The days of holding the audience captive to watching television at times that programmers tell them they have to watch it are coming to an end. It's a new world, where the viewer and fan wants to watch whatever they want to watch, whenever they want to watch it.
Joseph McGinty Nichol
#82. As absurd and dishonest as claiming that the trouble with computer games is that they stop people watching television.
Stephen Fry
#83. You know you're out of shape when you have a heart attack when you're watching television.
Robert Schimmel
#84. Just watching TV as a kid, for a long time I thought, as a young kid, obviously when I was, like, 4 or 5, I thought that people lived in the television.
Larenz Tate
#85. I then completely gave up reading newspapers and watching television, which freed up a considerable amount of time (say one hour or more a day, enough time to read more than a hundred additional books per year, which, after a couple of decades, starts mounting).
Nassim Nicholas Taleb
#86. Watching television in those days was not the same experience as it is today. After years of listening to radio, we found the black-and-white images mesmerizing.
Annette Funicello
#87. I don't really see a huge divide between filmmaking and television. In the end, a lot of people are going to be watching this stuff on their laptops and their iPhones anyway. So, it doesn't really matter where it comes from, as long as the stories get told.
Cary Fukunaga
#88. If I eat mindlessly while watching television, reading, or talking with someone else, I can go through an entire meal without tasting the food, without even noticing that I've been eating. The plate is empty but I didn't enjoy the food - I had all of the calories and little of the pleasure.
Dean Ornish
#89. The television business is based on managed dissatisfaction. You're watching a great television show you're really wrapped up in? You might get 50 minutes of watching a week and then 18,000 minutes of waiting until the next episode comes along.
Ted Sarandos
#90. Many decisions about the form and content of news programs are made on the basis of information about the viewer, the purpose of which is to keep the viewers watching so that they will be exposed to the commercials
Neil Postman
#91. The smartest kid Justin ever met, back in kindergarten, had told him to pretend his parents were characters in a television sitcom. 'Pretend there's a frame around 'em like the Tube, pretend they're a show you're watching. You can go into it if you want, or you can just watch and not go into it.
Thomas Pynchon
#92. I think many years from now, people will still watch television, though it will probably be 150 inches wide. What will change is the ability to get 'CSI' not only on TV but also on the Internet, even watching it in a foreign country as it's playing in the U.S.
Leslie Moonves
#93. If a Martian were watching our television shows, he'd conclude that guns were more common than hammers. They're not evil themselves--they're tools--but everywhere you go, bad people have them. It behooves the righteous to at least know how they work.
John Sandford
#94. I don't watch television, but I saw 'The Office' by accident. I thought it was so sophisticated, the Victorian love story, and so bold. We'd do anything, all of us, to not work in that environment, and then I'm sitting there watching hours of it.
Val Kilmer
#95. Watching television is like taking black spray paint to your third eye.
Bill Hicks
#96. That's pretty much how we get through our own lives, watching television. Smoking crap. Self-medicating. Redirecting our attention. Jacking off. Denial.
Chuck Palahniuk
#97. Somewhere in the back of their minds, hosts and guests alike know that the dinner party is a source of untold irritation, and that even the dullest evening spent watching television is preferable.
Craig Brown
#98. We take what's shown on television as the truth, and it isn't. News isn't even the truth on television. If you look up the definition of what news is, it isn't that what we're watching on the new - it's entertainment.
Val Kilmer
#99. Gambling is not as destructive as war or as boring as pornography. It is not as immoral as business or as suicidal as watching television. And the percentages are better than religion.
Mario Puzo
#100. If you're tired of watching rerun movies on television you're in luck, there are hundreds of thousands of books that are movies in text.
Dale Hollis
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