This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
My father hated radio and could not wait for television to be invented so he could hate that too.
Father | Hate | Television |
Awake, my soul stretch every nerve, And press with vigor on A heavenly race demands thy zeal, And an immortal crown.
Human Energy presents itself to our view as the term of a vast process in which the whole mass of the universe is involved. In us, the evolution of the world towards the spirit becomes conscious. From that moment, our perfection, our interest, our salvation as elements of creation can only be to press on with this evolution with all our strength. We cannot yet understand exactly where it will lead us, but it would be absurd for us to doubt that it will lead us towards some end of supreme value. From this there finally emerges in our twentieth century human consciousness, for the first time since the awakening of life on earth, the fundamental problem of Action. No longer, as in the past, for our small selves, for our small family, our small country; but for the salvation and the success of the universe, how must we, modern men, organize around us for the best, the maintenance, distribution and progress of human energy?
Absurd | Awakening | Doubt | Energy | Evolution | Life | Life | Progress | Salvation | Spirit | Success | Time | Universe | Will | World | Understand |
Pierre Beaumarchais, fully Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
Only one thing to it: a strong stomach. The guts to gladhand a man you're going to stab in the back; pledge allegiance to principles you stomp on every day; righteously denounce some despot in the press and sell him arms under the table. The talent to whip up the voters' worst passions while you seem to call on their highest instincts, and the sense to stay wrapped in the flag. That's politics: I'll take the simple life.
Despot | Man | Principles | Sense | Talent |
Educational television had a dramatic effect on relational aggression. The more the kids watched, the crueler they’d be to their classmates. This correlation was 2.5 times higher than the correlation between violent media and physical aggression.
I used to think it was great to disregard happiness, to press on to a high goal, careless, disdainful of it. But now I see that there is nothing so great as to be capable of happiness; to pluck it out of "each moment and whatever happens"; to find that one can ride as gay and buoyant on the angry, menacing, tumultuous waves of life as on those that glide and glitter under a clear sky; that it is not defeat and wretchedness which come out of the storm of adversity, but strength and calmness.
Newspapers, television networks, and magazines have sometimes been outrageously abusive, untruthful, arrogant, and hypocritical. But it hardly follows that elimination of a strong and independent press is the way to eliminate abusiveness.
Barbara Ehrenreich, born Barbara Alexander
So why do people keep on watching? The answer, by now, should be perfectly obvious: we love television because television brings us a world in which television does not exist. In fact, deep in their hearts, this is what the spuds crave most: a rich, new, participatory life.
Love | People | Television | World |
A 2004 study found that teens who watch a lot of television with sexual content and more likely to initiate intercourse in the following year. Overexposure to highly-sexed television made kids act older--12-year-olds behaved like 14-year-olds. A decade of new research confirms that heavy exposure to violent and sexually explicit media triggers unhealthy responses from boys and girls alike, regardless of race. But we don't yet know the full effects of all this technology on our kids. CAMRA, the Children and Media Research Advancement Act, which I introduced in the Senate, would coordinate and fund new research into the effects of viewing and using electronic media, including television, computers, video games, and the Internet…
Boys | Children | Research | Study | Technology | Television | Following |
Should be stripped of their non-profit status, and television networks who work with them should realize they are working with a political organization, not an educational organization.
Television | Work |
This commission is a political organization designed to support the two major parties and shut out third party and independent candidates... We need to reinvigorate our democracy by having real debates -- not joint press conferences designed to limit the voices heard by voters.
Democracy | Need | Organization |
Raymond Chandler, fully Raymond Thornton Chandler
The law isn't justice. It's a very imperfect mechanism. If you press exactly the right buttons and are also lucky, justice may show up in the answer. A mechanism is all the law was ever intended to be.
Ray Bradbury, fully Ray Douglas Bradbury
I still love books. Nothing a computer can do can compare to a book. You can't really put a book on the Internet. Three companies have offered to put books by me on the Net, and I said, 'If you can make something that has a nice jacket, nice paper with that nice smell, then we'll talk.' All the computer can give you is a manuscript. People don't want to read manuscripts. They want to read books. Books smell good. They look good. You can press it to your bosom. You can carry it in your pocket.
Richard Bach, fully Richard David Bach
Other people think they know what you are: glamour, sex, money, power, love. It may be a press agent dream which has nothing to do with you, maybe it's something you don't even like, but that's what they think you are. People rush at you from all sides, they think they're going to get these things if they touch you. It's scary, so you build walls around yourself, thick glass walls while you're trying to think, trying to catch your breath. You know who you are inside, but people outside see something different. You can choose to become the image, and let go of who you are, or continue as you are and feel phony when you play the image.
If there is only one Creator who made the tiger and the lamb, the cheetah and the gazelle, what is He playing at? Is he a sadist who enjoys spectator blood sports? ... Is He maneuvering to maximize David Attenborough's television ratings?
Yet the final indictment against the television decision-makers is more profound and more serious. Their recent splurge of paranormalism debauches true science and undermines the efforts of their own excellent science departments. The universe is a strange and wondrous place. The truth is quite odd enough to need no help from pseudo-scientific charlatans. The public appetite for wonder can be fed, through the powerful medium of television, without compromising the principles of honesty and reason.
Appetite | Enough | Honesty | Need | Principles | Public | Science | Television | Truth | Universe | Wonder |
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
I leave you gentleman now. You will now write it; you will interpret it; that's your right. But as I leave you I want you to know.... just think how much you're going to be missing. You don't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference, and I hope that what I have said today will at least make television, radio, the press recognize that they have a right and a responsibility, if they're against a candidate give him the shaft, but also recognize if they give him the shaft, put one lonely reporter on the campaign who'll report what the candidate says now and then. Thank you, gentlemen, and good day.
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
You won't have Nixon to kick around anymore, because, gentlemen, this is my last press conference.
Richard Nixon, fully Richard Milhous Nixon
Millions who endure poverty and bad government can now know what they are missing. To see how the other half lives all they have to do is switch on their television sets.
Government | Poverty | Television | Government |