Minimum

I used to think that television could be potentially the most powerful medium for the dissemination of knowledge that the world has ever known, it could be a very rich and rewarding thing if handled properly and that the problem was in the execution. I've now come, after ten years in the business, five years of which was as a television critic, to taking the very extreme view point. I think television itself is bad.

The idea of television, the act of watching television kills the imagination. It's not like radio, with radio you had to listen, had to make things, you had to build things in your mind. Movies do that. Television is something else again. Television lays it all out there in a very prescribed way and the bare minimum of imagination on the part of the viewer is needed and I really fear for all of us.

--Harlan Ellison (May 27, 1934 - June 28, 2018)
Interview in 1979, quoted in "The Online Copywriter's Handbook" (2002) by Robert W. Bly

Thinking III

"If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; but if you really make them think, they'll hate you."
--Don Marquis

Revolution

"I always thought of the zombies as being about revolution, one generation consuming the next."
--George A. Romero

Sophisticated

"As I have said before, the ever more sophisticated weapons piling up in the arsenals of the wealthiest and the mightiest can kill the illiterate, the ill, the poor and the hungry but they cannot kill ignorance, illnesses, poverty or hunger."
--Fidel Castro,
Speech at the International Conference on Financing for Development (March 2002)

Same IV

".. the reason life works at all is that not everyone in your tribe is nuts on the same day."
--Anne Lamott,
"Plan B: Further Thoughts on Faith"

Dust II

"All the world is made of faith, and trust, and pixie dust."
-- J.M. Barrie,
"Peter Pan"

Details

"I don't always go into details about the possible side effects of drugs. I tell them all drugs are poisons with possible beneficial side effects."
--Dr Jay Gordon

Relax

"Please relax," said the voice pleasantly, like a stewardess in an airliner with only one wing and two engines one of which is on fire, "you are perfectly safe."
--Douglas Adams,
"The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Imposed

"And if all others accepted the lie which the Party imposed--if all records told the same tale--then the lie passed into history and became truth. 'Who controls the past' ran the Party slogan, 'controls the future: who controls the present controls the past."
--George Orwell

Ordained II

"Our bodies must always be wherever that struggle is.  And the moment we forget that, the moment we become lazy, the moment we sit back, then then the evil ones do their ordained tasks to us."
--William Kunstler

Greater

"The suffering of our people is greater than our differences. We are not yet free at last, so there is work to be done."
--Louis Farrakhan

Cheap II

"When your response to everything that is wrong with the world is to say, 'there ought to be a law,' you are saying that you hold freedom very cheap."
--Thomas Sowell
(1930- ) Writer and economist

Making II

"It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic."
--Winston Churchill

Yum

"After you have witnessed the reality, you can no longer look at a piece of steak, and simply think 'yum'."
--Mango Wodzak,
"Destination Eden"

Command

"Our principle is that the Party commands the gun, and the gun must never be allowed to command the Party."
--Chairman Mao

Prey

"Take, for example, the African jungle, the home of the cheetah. On whom does the cheetah prey? The old, the sick, the wounded, the weak, the very young, but never the strong. Lesson: If you would not be prey, you had better be strong."
--G. Gordon Liddy

Traits

"Lawyers should be chosen because they can demonstrate a history rich in human traits, the ability to care, the courage to fight, the will to win, a concern for the human condition, a passion for justice and simple uncompromising honesty. These are the traits of the lawyer."
--Gerry Spence

Revealed

"Don’t turn your face away.
Once you've seen, you can no longer act like you don’t know.
Open your eyes to the truth. It’s all around you.
Don’t deny what the eyes to your soul have revealed to you.

Now that you know, you cannot feign ignorance.
Now that you’re aware of the problem, you cannot pretend you don’t care.
To be concerned is to be human.
To act is to care."
--Vashti Quiroz-Vega

Successful II

"Have you any idea how successful censorship is on TV? Don't know the answer? Hmm... successful, isn't it?"
--Max Headroom

Interest

"Just because you do not take an interest in politics doesn't mean politics won't take an interest in you."
--Pericles

Divided

"It seemed the world was divided into good and bad people. The good ones slept better... while the bad ones seemed to enjoy the waking hours much more."
--Woody Allen

Columns

"We have ceased to be a nation under law but instead a homeland where the withered Bill of Rights, like a dead trumpet vine, clings to our pseudo-Roman columns."
--Gore Vidal,
"The State of the Union," The Nation (September 13, 2004)

Rise II

"So long as men worship the Caesars and Napoleons, Caesars and Napoleons will duly rise and make them miserable."
--Aldous Huxley,
"Ends and Means" (1937)

Formidable II

"By the time his campaign reached the pivotal California primary, Bobby Kennedy was beginning to wrestle with a variety of formidable problems that he knew would confront him as president. One of them was the CIA. What was he going to do with it, he wondered out loud one day on the campaign plane with Pete Hamill, one of the journalists who grew so close to Kennedy that he briefly wrote speeches for him. 'I have to decide whether to eliminate the operations arm of the agency or what the hell to do with it,' Kennedy told Hamill. 'We can’t have these cowboys wandering around and shooting people and doing all these unauthorized things.'"
--David Talbot,
"Brothers"

Division

"What we need in the United States is not division; what we need in the United States is not hatred; what we need in the United States is not violence or lawlessness; but love and wisdom, and compassion toward one another, and a feeling of justice toward those who still suffer within our country, whether they be white or they be black."
--Robert F. Kennedy,
November 20, 1925 - June 6, 1968

Own III

"The future is not completely beyond our control. It is the work of our own hands."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Rising

"We must continue to prove to the world that we can provide a rising standard of living for all men without loss of civil rights or human dignity to any man."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Trustee

"Every generation inherits a world it never made; and, as it does so, it automatically becomes the trustee of that world for those who come after. In due course, each generation makes its own accounting to its children."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Tracks

"There are people in every time and every land who want to stop history in its tracks. They fear the future, mistrust the present, and invoke the security of a comfortable past which, in fact, never existed."
--Robert F. Kennedy

Easy IV

"The travail of freedom and justice is not easy, but nothing serious and important in life is easy. The history of humanity has been a continuing struggle against temptation and tyranny - and very little worthwhile has ever been achieved without pain."
--Robert F. Kennedy