Neil Postman Quotes

I'm fascinated that people drawn to cults want to know what to do. And people want to know what to think. And people want to know how to feel. Not just what to feel but how to feel.

When people look only at the surface and that satisfies them and they think from that surface they see, that is to be truly blind.

People being encouraged to make up their own minds and think for themselves is so important. This world talks endlessly about freedom of choice, but we've never been [nothing] more than a nation of robots. Everybody is seduced by corporate culture.

I made the decision to quit show business. Give up the skintight dresses and manicured smiles. The false concern over sentimental lyrics. I would never again work to make people smile inanely and would take on the responsibility of making them think.

I'm against ignorance. I'm against sloppy, emotional thinking. I'm against fashionable thinking. I am against the whole cliché of the moment.

I have nothing from my childhood. I think you carry those books with you. It's like in [Ray] Bradbury's "Fahrenheit 451." Books are outlawed in this future society so people become the book they love by memorizing it.

Freethinkers are generally those who never think at all.

An image of thought called philosophy has been formed historically and it effectively stops people from thinking.

Reputation matters so much only because people so seldom think for themselves.

Cognitive consonance is what writing in the Age of the idiot is all about. The key to success in the scribbling profession is to strike the right balance of mediocrity in writing and thinking, which invariably entails echoing one of two party lines, poorly.

Whenever I hear anything described as a heartless assault on our children, I tend to think it’s a good idea.

If you make people think they're thinking they'll like you, but if you make people actually think, then watch out, you're not going to be popular.

To most people, nothing is more troublesome than the effort of thinking.

Thinking doesn't pay. Just makes you discontented with what you see around you.

The average man never really thinks from end to end of his life. The mental activity of such people is only a mouthing of clichés.

Intellectually, most people never wash. They never free their minds of the accumulated rubbish of centuries.

They take the circuits out of people’s brains that make it possible for them to think for themselves. Their world is like the one that George Orwell depicted in his novel. I’m sure you realize that there are plenty of people who are looking for exactly that kind of brain death. It makes life a lot easier. You don’t have to think about difficult things, just shut up and do what your superiors tell you to do.

Ignorance is servitude, because as a man thinks, so he is; a man who does not think for himself and allows himself to be guided by the thought of another is like the beast led by a halter.

I think there are two ways in which people are controlled - first of all frighten people and secondly demoralize them.

I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are.

For me science fiction is a way of thinking, a way of logic that bypasses a lot of nonsense. It allows people to look directly at important subjects.

If you can't be unconventional, be obtuse. Be deliberately obtuse, because there are 5 billion people out there thinking in train tracks, and thinking what they have been taught to think.

A high standard of living is usually accompanied by a low standard of thinking.

Do people conform to the instructions of us old ones? Each thinks he must know best about himself, and thus many are lost entirely.

Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.