Billy Crystal Quotes

We're obviously in a strange environment where practically anyone can set themselves up as a pundit of sorts. It's all about sorting the wheat from the chaff, and I'm very interested in reading different points of view, and certainly different generations than my own that have such a very different world view.

The whole Twitter phenomenon is really indicative of what's happening in this country. And I say this in condemnation of myself as much as anyone else - we are growing into a nation that has no time, desire or capacity for truth. All we can handle is 140 characters of knowledge.

Because of the Internet, we're all such authorities on every subject and can chat about all sorts of things. But when push comes to shove, when our ideas are put to the test, that's when we find out who we really are.

It is now such a complex society in terms of media. It just comes at us from every direction. You kind of have to push it all away.

We binge on instant knowledge, but we are learning the hazards, and readers are warier than they used to be of nanosecond-interpretations of Supreme Court decisions.

I think the whole spoiler thing has taken over the media.

When CNN does a story and then says, 'Tweet us what you think' - why? Why does it matter what I think? Why should my thoughts be broadcast on a national news program? It's enough for me to just sit and listen and learn.

Instantaneous and mass communication is the mother of mass naivety. Should we then lose hope? Is there any hope? But to lose hope is as dangerous as to nurture false hope. Where then can we find hope that is responsible?

We live in an age of sound bites and buzz words.

It's much easier to get your material out to the public now than it was in 1988, when you basically had to get onto cable to have a joke heard across the country. Now all you need is an iPhone, and you can get your joke heard across the country.

As we continue to become a society of tweets, shorter and shorter messages, there's great value in the contemplation and reflection that comes from reading a long body of work.

I think the American people are bombarded with information from all directions, all day long.

If we are not serious about facts and what's true and what's not. And particularly in an age of social media where so many people are getting their information in sound bites and snippets off their phones, if we can't discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems.

The public square is more public than ever, but minds are rarely changed in 140 character bursts and by selfies.

Our whole educational and cultural system is not designed to provide those intellectual tools, so people are often lost and the internet often becomes kind of a cult generator.

Everything also calms down with the influx of social media, there's so much happening all the time.

I worry that as the problem-solving power of our technologies increases, our ability to distinguish between important and trivial or even non-existent problems diminishes.

There's so much active misinformation and it's packaged very well and it looks the same when you see it on a Facebook page or you turn on your television. If everything seems to be the same and no distinctions are made, then we won't know what to protect.

I'm really glad I'm not on Twitter. Because I'd have to be answering things that I didn't really know anything about, and I'd rather just wait for the dust to settle and then say something.

The conditions conducive to deep thought have become increasingly rare in our highly mediated lives... Now we live in an attention economy, where the most in-demand commodity is 'eyeballs.

I cannot understand how sensible people still defend Facebook, YouTube and Twitter

This is what you do now to give your day topography--scan the boxes, read the news, see the chain of your friends reporting about themselves, take the 140-character expository bursts and sift through for the information you need. It's a highly deceptive world, one that constantly asks you to comment but doesn't really care what you have to say. The illusion of participation can sometimes lead to participation. But more often than not, it only leads to more illusion, dressed in the guise of reality.

Today on social media, you can release anything and everybody will hear it. Back in the day, that was your only outlet, getting a deal with a record company and them distributing it around the world.

Social networks are an incredible new tool which enables me to speak directly to large numbers of people. It is at the cutting edge of personal interaction around the world.

Not for the first time Richard reflected that this age's vaunted 'communications industry' had chiefly provided people and nations with the means of frightening to death and simultaneously boring to extinction themselves and each other.