Dumbing Down Quotes

One trend that bothers me is the glorification of stupidity, that the media is reassuring people it's alright not to know anything. That to me is far more dangerous than a little pornography on the Internet.

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance.

I think the smart people will get even smarter, and the dumb people will get even dumber. But I think they all will enjoy A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila, no matter how you slice it. You know, we keep eating it up. Some of the most intelligent people I know cannot get enough of it. That's a dangerous thing.

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.

You could argue that as web audiences have grown larger and advertisers have demanded scale, the web has dumbed down - like the mainstream media we so mocked.

The public, obviously, they takes things in a very simplest fashion and so they should. That's why we have such wonderful television.

In a word, we may reasonably hope for the virtual abolition of education when I'm as good as you has fully had its way. All incentives to learn and all penalties for not learning will vanish.The few who might want to learn will be prevented; who are they to overtop their fellows? And anyway the teachers-or should I say, nurses?-will be far too busy reassuring the dunces and patting them on the back to waste any time on real teaching. We shall no longer have to plan and toil to spread imperturable conceit and incurable ignorance among men. The little vermin themselves will do it for us.

My working hypothesis is that stupidity in popular culture is a constant. Popular culture cannot get more stupid.

It's just unconscionable that America has become so stupid.

When you drink fluoridated water, you're drinking liquid Prozac. You drink enough of it, even though it's a small amount, drink it for decades and decades and what does Prozac do to you? It dumbs you down; it makes you docile.

If you're the head of the organization that has to pay salaries, bills and keep the money coming, you have to be concerned with pleasing the middle. I find it means you have to dumb down your message to something less radical than the gospel. It can't be the real gospel. It has to be "churchiness" that pleases everyone, so they come back next Sunday and keep putting money in the collection plate. I don't mean that in a cynical way. I just think it's what happens.

It's hard to decide if TV makes morons out of everyone, or if it mirrors Americans who really are morons to begin with.

One of the painful signs of years of dumbed-down education is how many people are unable to make a coherent argument. They can vent their emotions, question other people's motives, make bold assertions, repeat slogans-- anything except reason.

Americans are used to being pandered to and spoon-fed everything. In a culture that needs caffeine-free cherry chocolate diet Coke, you'd best deliver information with entertainment.

To win [elections] in this country these days you've got to campaign down to a 13-year-old's level of mental development.

If we start to dumb down what has been made clear, where does that stop?

The degree to which the people of America are being dumbed down on purpose every day is striking. And all for the express purpose of maintaining in power a political party [the Democrats] which seeks a permanent underclass and as many dependent people on government as possible. As many uninformed, misinformed, know-nothings as they can get.

What terrifies me is that I might somehow endorse that view so people think they don't have to read books anymore.

It's not the rules everywhere, you know? That's not the rules everywhere - that things have to be dumbed down in order to become massively popular. And that hasn't always been the rule, even in America.

I feel like the world is getting dumber. I don't necessarily think people are stupid, but I think we're getting dumber.

Hollywood movies are designed for 15-year-old youths from North Dakota who, intellectually speaking, are on equal terms with a British zoo animal.

I think there's an unfortunate thing where a lot of content geared towards kids and families is watered down, dumbed down.

I feel quite confident that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are growing 'dumber,' if what you really mean to say is 'less culturally literate.'

I'm generally pessimistic about the dumbing down of America - especially with summer movies.

Finally I'm becoming stupider no more.