Home / Authors / Neil Postman

Neil Postman

Neil Postman Quotes

Author

Neil Postman (March 8, 1931 - October 5, 2003) was an American cultural critic, educator, and author. Known for his profound insights into the relationship between media, technology, and culture, Postman's work has had a significant impact on modern society.

Filter quotes by topic

All Television Ideas Culture People Technology Entertainment World Ifs Education May News Discourse Doe Knows Mind Serious Form Huxley Information Language

Famous Neil Postman Quotes

“Make no mistake about it: the labeling of someone's language as 'sexist' involves a political judgment and implies the desirability of a particular sociological doctrine. One may be in favor of that doctrine (as I believe I am) but it is quite another matter to force writers by edicts and censorship into accepting it.”

Believe May Matter Political Language Force I Believe Mistake Accepting Particular Speech Judgment Favors Doctrine Censorship Sexist Labeling Sociological Desirability

Author:Neil Postman

“Childhood is analogous to language learning. It has a biological basis but cannot be realized unless a social environment triggers and nurtures it, that is, has need of it. If a culture is dominated by a medium that requires the segregation of the young in order that they learn unnatural, specialized, and complex skills and attitudes, then childhood, in one form or another, will emerge, articulate and indispensable.”

“The way in which the photograph records experience is also different from the way of language. Language makes sense only when it is presented as a sequence of propositions. Meaning is distorted when a word or sentence is, as we say, taken out of context; when a reader or listener is deprived of what was said before, and after. But there is no such thing as a photograph taken out of context, for a photograph does not require one. In fact, the point of photography is to isolate images from context, so as to make them visible in a different way.”

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“You can only photograph a fragment of the here and now. The photograph presents the world as object; language, the world as idea.”

World Ideas Language Objects Photograph Fragments Here And Now

Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“The reader must come armed , in a serious state of intellectual readiness. This is not easy because he comes to the text alone. In reading, one's responses are isolated, one'sintellect thrown back on its own resourses. To be confronted by the cold abstractions of printed sentences is to look upon language bare, without the assistance of either beauty or community. Thus, reading is by its nature a serious business. It is also, of course, an essentially rational activity.”

“People of a television culture need “plain language” both aurally and visually, and will even go so far as to require it in some circumstances by law. The Gettysburg Address would probably have been largely incomprehensible to a 1985 audience.”

People Needs Has Beens Law Culture Language Audience Television Circumstances Addresses Gettysburg Plain Language Gettysburg Address

Book:Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

Source: Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business

“Embedded in every technology there is a powerful idea, sometimes two or three powerful ideas. Like language itself, a technology predisposes us to favor and value certain perspectives and accomplishments and to subordinate others. Every technology has a philosophy, which is given expression in how the technology makes people use their minds, in how it codifies the world, in which of our senses it amplifies, in which of our emotional and intellectual tendencies it disregards.”

Source: The End of Education: Redefining the Value of School