Passive Entertainment Quotes

Television is a device that permits people who haven't anything to do to watch people who can't do anything.

For God’s sake, let us be men not monkeys minding machines or sitting with our tails curled while the machine amuses us, the radio or film or gramophone. Monkeys with a bland grin on our faces.

Television's not going read stories to you.

I've never seen the Osbournes, I've never seen Paris Hilton. I'd rather read than watch reality TV. I'd rather live life than watch somebody else living it.

The price for sitting and watching game shows and betting on lottery is that the vast majority of the viewers will never become rich

I can think of a lot of things to do," he said, "and none of them involve standing up. - Al

Of course, a culture as manically and massively materialistic as ours creates materialistic behavior in its people, especially in those people who've been subjected to nothing but the destruction of imagination that this culture calls education, the destruction of autonomy it calls work, and the destruction of activity it calls entertainment.

I wouldn't classify television as "cool," because to me anything that involves the reader's consciousness to drive and carry a story is an "active" medium, and anything that sort of just pours into the eyeballs and ears is the opposite.

You can, after all, reduce the reasons for watching TV to but two: to be lulled, and to be stimulated. Some people do one sometimes, the other sometimes. Some people do all of one or all of the other.

Television is a passivity.

You ever look for the remote control, but you can't find it, so you just decide, "Ah, guess I'm not watching TV. I'm not gonna take two steps and turn it on myself. I'll go to the gym if I'm going to work out."

I don't watch television, I think it destroys the art of talking about oneself.

Let's buy books so as not to read them; let's go to concerts without caring to hear the music or see who's there; let's take long walks because we're sick of walking; and let's spend whole days in the country, just because it bores us.

You have to surrender less when you see a film than when you go and see something live.

It cannot but be injurious to the human mind never to be called into effort: the habit of receiving pleasure without any exertion of thought, by the mere excitement of curiosity, and sensibility, may be justly ranked among the worst effects of habitual novel-reading.

It is so very easy and so very pleasant, too, to read only books which lead to nothing, light and interesting books, and the more the better, that it is almost as difficult to wean ourselves from it as from the habit of chewing tobacco to excess, or of smoking the whole time, or of depending for stimulus upon tea or coffee or spirits.

"What if I like watching television? What if I don't want to do much else other than read a book?"... "What if I'm tired when I get home? What if I don't fill my days with frenetic activity?" "But one day you might wish you had."

The sad fact is that it looks more and more as if our national sport is not playing at all—but watching.

Time Warner has called and they want us all back on the couch, just consuming - not producing, not sharing - and we should say, 'No.'

Certainly, we do not need to be soothed and entertained always like children. He who resorts to the easy novel, because he is languid, does no better than if he took a nap.

That's what I did growing up. Other than being on the computer, I was watching TV and movies. I make no apologies.

I was never one for just sitting in front of the telly.

For tens of millions of people [television] has become habit-forming, brain-softening, taste-degrading.

All I do is sit at home and watch Netflix.

If you've never watched people watch television, I don't recommend it. It's not an exciting thing to do.