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Neil Postman

Neil Postman Quotes

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Famous Neil Postman Quotes

“People like ourselves may see nothing wondrous in writing, but our anthropologists know how strange and magical it appears to a purely oral people - a conversation with no one and yet with everyone. What could be stranger than the silence one encounters when addressing a question to a text? What could be more metaphysically puzzling than addressing an unseen audience, as every writer of books must do? And correcting oneself because one knows that an unknown reader will disapprove or misunderstand?”

PeopleKnowsWritingMayBookSilenceAudienceKnow HowStrangeReaderConversationOneselfStrangerEncountersUnseenWondrousCorrectingAnthropologistsPuzzling
Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
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“Anyone who has studied the history of technology knows that technological change is always a Faustian bargain: Technology giveth and technology taketh away, and not always in equal measure. A new technology sometimes creates more than it destroys. Sometimes, it destroys more than it creates. But it is never one-sided. The invention of the printing press is an excellent example. Printing fostered the modern idea of individuality but it destroyed the medieval sense of community and social integration.”

KnowsIdeasSometimesSocialCommunityTechnologyModernExampleEqualPressesIndividualityInventionDestroyedExcellentTechnologicalIntegrationMedievalBargainsPrintingNew TechnologyPrinting PressOne SidedTechnological Change
Author:Neil Postman
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“Everything in our background has prepared us to know and resist a prison when the gates begin to close around us . . . But what if there are no cries of anguish to be heard? Who is prepared to take arms against a sea of amusements? To whom do we complain, and when, and in what tone of voice, when serious discourse dissolves into giggles? What is the antidote to a culture's being drained by laughter?”

IfsKnowsCultureVoiceHeardSeaCrySeriousArmsLaughterCriticismPrisonPreparedComplainingBackgroundsToneWhat IfGatesDiscourseAnguishAmusementAntidoteGiggleDrained
Author:Neil Postman
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“Once you have learned to ask questions - relevant and appropriate and substantial questions - you have learned how to learn and no one can keep you from learning whatever you want or need to know.”

KnowsWantNeedsScienceAsksLearningTeacherTeachingAppropriateRelevant
Book:Teaching As a Subversive Activity: A No-Holds-Barred Assault on Outdated Teaching Methods-with Dramatic and Practical Proposals on How Education Can Be Made Relevant to Today's World
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“Information is now a commodity that can be bought and sold, or used as a form of entertainment, or worn like a garment to enhance one's status. It comes indiscriminately, directed at no one in particular, disconnected from usefulness; we are glutted with information, drowning in information, have no control over it, don't know what to do with it.”

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Author:Neil Postman
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