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Americans no longer talk to each other, they entertain each other. They do not argue with propositions; they argue with good looks, celebrities and commercials.

— Neil Postman Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

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More quotes by Neil Postman

A definition is the start of an argument, not the end of one.

In a purely oral culture, intelligence is often associated with aphoristic ingenuity, that is, the power to invent compact sayings of wide applicability.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

What ideas are convenient to express inevitably becomes the important content of a culture.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

The clearest way to see through a culture is to attend to its tools for conversation.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

Voting, we might even say, is the next to last refuge of the politically impotent.

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985)

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Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Neil Postman (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.