American Critic Quotations | Page 2

This comparative indifference to clearness and consistency of thought is visible even in that chief object of our national concern, education.

Also, the commercial media in a superior position, really, to any other corporate lobby, because where would people hear about commercial media or corporate media criticism, where would they hear criticism of them other than in the commercial media?

There is one thing that matters -- to set a chime of words tinkling in the minds of a few fastidious people.

The relationship between the media owner, their relationship isn't strictly with people and audiences. It's also with advertisers, and that's the most relationship in radio; in fact it pays the bills.

The number one lobby that opposes campaign finance reform in the United States is the National Association of Broadcasters.

Things do go in cycles so I never believe rock was really dead it was really finished or had it, it just comes back in a different form.

There's this obsession with the bottom being the best. So that's why, to get to the top, they want to act like they're at the bottom.

If you fight back and get hit, it hurts a little while; if you don't fight back it hurts forever.

If you look at the history of broadcasting, what you find is the National Association of Broadcasters is a trade association whose mission is to protect the interests of the commercial broadcasters.

If you litigate, you're entitled to litigate and you're entitled to have the issues explored completely.

If you've got a case that's due out or you have a trial starting Monday morning, and you haven't read the file, you haven't done the homework and done the research, you ought to be in there Saturday and if necessary Sunday. That goes with the territory.

In the last few years there's been an explosion of bands that flame to the sky with one huge release - only to burn out just as quickly.

In other words, New York has gone all suburban and bourgeois on us.

In the beginning, I don't think any juvenile of kinder years, of young age like that, should be in an adult facility. I think that is in and of itself criminal.

If you run - if you give the gavel to a lawyer, they'll take it.

If you're starting to think of that one guy at the table as your archrival because he's beaten you three times in the last hour, remember: you're not Spider-Man, and he's not the Green Goblin.

If you're running for reelection in the House of Representatives race, you know, it's very important to you that you be on fairly good terms with the local affiliates in the largest market in your area. I mean you don't want to antagonize them.

But having said that, there's also a sea change in attitude towards media.

But if it doesn't have pleasure and interest, then it does not have life. And the same must be true about writing about literature.

Because what's going on now, and this applies mostly to television stations in the largest markets too, but TV stations basically are now the primary receivers of campaign spending.

Because Hightower's problem, among other things, is that advertisers would be a lot less interested in his show than in Limbaugh's, even if they have similar ratings, because of what Hightower is saying.

Home Alone goes Hollywood, a funny premise until the kids start pulling off stunts not even Steven Spielberg would know how to do.

Genet was an actor in the play of his life, putting on masks, rearranging facts to suit his purpose and clouding himself in mystique.

The majority of this money goes to pay commercial broadcasters to run these ads, these TV spots, which are now the whole basis of campaigning.

The humanities need to be defended to-day against the encroachments of physical science, as they once needed to be against the encroachment of theology.

A gross and palpable error of the era that is just closing has been the confusion of mechanical and material progress with moral progress.

You've got to be big enough to say I was wrong, have your administrative assistant get the lawyers, get the litigants back in, and be big enough to go on the record and correct it.

All the things I really like are either immoral, illegal or fattening.

The commercial broadcasters have tremendous influence in Washington, D.C., for a couple of reasons. First, they're extremely rich and they have lots of money and they have had for a long time, so they can give money to politicians, which gets their attention.

The man who can make hard things easy is the educator.