Jack Valenti Quotes

Because people see violence on the movie screen, they're not going to go out and hold up a liquor store and kill somebody. It really doesn't correlate.

If you could place blame on entertainment for all the crimes people commit, you'd be in court all the livelong day.

We cannot turn our back and say that violence in films or anything that we do doesn't have a sort of influence. It does.

From the subtle to the extreme, our culture and our values are under unrelenting attack from the media.

If you say one gets influenced watching a character, I think it's foolish. Cinema reflects society; society rarely reflects cinema.

All the violence in videos and movies, you can't tell me that that wouldn't influence a disturbed person.

Movies are movies, and I don't think any of them are going to hurt the moral fiber of America and all that nonsense.

'Grand Theft Auto', in its deification of antisocial behavior, is where I heap the most of my scorn.

The media has affected everybody's consciousness much more than most people will admit.

Postman is a media analyst and his theory is that television doesn't influence our culture, but that it is our culture and the presidency and anything that relies on television.

The power of television - it's so present in our lives, we don't even know how powerful it is.

People used to laugh that academics would study Disney movies. There's nothing more important for academics to study, because they shape the minds of our children possibly more than any single thing.

Nothing is really real unless it “happens” on television…Television has brought an inversion of our consciousness. When we take our eyes off the tube, we see things that are not quite authentic – or rather, which gain authenticity only by their resemblance to how things happen on television

The basic purpose of this documentary is to very strongly and efficiently depict the national prevalence of juvenile delinquency, crime, moral degeneration, narcotics, and the facts that women are afraid to walk on the street at night and parents are fearful for their children, husbands for their wives … to portray and remind the people of something they already know exists, and that is the moral crisis in America, the rising crime rate, pornography, filthy magazines, which is all part of the same package. We want to just make them mad, make their stomachs turn.

Civilizations do not give out, they give in. They come apart not in a flash but by the inch. In a society where anything goes, everything eventually will.

We need to take on Hollywood. They are poisoning the minds of our kids.

What is the cause of the great overflow of Vice in this age

The spirit of the times may alter, will alter. Our rulers will become corrupt, our people careless.

The Press has not only a great influence over our manners and morals, but contributes largely to our pleasures.

Because of our sin, we as individuals and as a nation continue to experience a decline in moral values and beliefs. Our sinful behavior has resulted in increasing rates of unmarried adolescent and adult sexual activity, the birth of children to unwed mothers, the spread of sexually transmitted diseases and decreasing marital fidelity. These are all signs of the decline of our culture.

Outside of the killings, we have one of the lowest crime rates in the country.

Our secular culture is adrift in a sea of relativism, escapism, and self-indulgent inanities, with our media and entertainment elites leading the parade.

There's a lot to be done; I just see a total moral decay in our society.

It's scary how effective movies can be. It's a very powerful medium that I think is sometimes abused.

Example and general milieu, once considered so important in the nurture of children, are sacrificed on the altars of the false god we call free choice but which imprisons us all in a collective moral paralysis and delivers an anarchy that the State itself shrinks from challenging.