Dumbing Down Quotes

The dumbing down of America is evident in the slow decay of substantive content, a kind of celebration of ignorance. ~ Carl Sagan

Dumbing down takes many forms: art that is good for you, museums that flatter you, universities that increase your self-esteem. Culture, after all, is really about you. ~ Denis Dutton

At the core of what I'm doing is a belief in the audience, a belief that populism doesn't mean dumbing down theater, but rather giving the audience a voice and a role in experiencing theater. ~ Diane Paulus

No one can know how long this dumbing-down of American religion will persist. But so long as it does, citizens should probably be more vigilant about policing the public square, not less so ... [Y]ou cannot sustain liberal democracy without cultivating liberal habits of mind among religious believers. That remains true today, both in Baghdad and in Baton Rouge. ~ Mark Lilla

The ability to convince people of the wackiest notions - and both parties can do it - it's part of the dumbing down of America that's really highly problematic. ~ Gary Ackerman

In specific moments of ground-level clarity, I recognize the dumbing down of the nation for what it is: an act of charity committed specifically for knotheads like me. ~ Michael Perry

I love a good harsh horror movie, when it's done well. But there are times when it feels cynical. You can tell when a filmmaker loves the genre, and you can tell when someone's just cashing in a paycheck. Then it becomes a dumbing down - a fetishisation of violence that I react very strongly against. ~ Drew Goddard

The safest way to success is to write according to the capacity of the stupidest member of the audience. ~ Natasha Pulley

Everybody is in your business, gossiping and being mean spirited. It's different. Sometimes I'm like, "Do I want to do this?," because it's not about the art anymore. It's a struggle. There's part of me that wants to share my gift, which is art, and if I don't, am I taking away something that the Creator gave me to share? At the same time, I don't want to be a part of feeding the dumbing down of society. ~ Tinsel Korey

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. ~ Carl Sagan

In Britain, we've tended to replace the kind of architectural culture valued in much of Europe with an in-flight magazine lifestyle - all branding, marketing and 'accessibility', a word that usually means dumbing-down. ~ David Chipperfield

True literacy is becoming an arcane art and the nation [United States] is steadily dumbing down. ~ Isaac Asimov

When we crumble under the exorbitant weight of conspicuous commodities and the material pressure in a universe of illusion, life may become disheveled and devastated, while our mind has been dumbed down and our willpower crippled. ( "Buying now. Dying later " ) ~ Erik Pevernagie

Stop worrying about the 'dumbing down' of our language by bloggers, tweeters, cableheads and MSM thumbsuckers engaged in a 'race to the bottom' of the page by little minds confined to little words. ~ William Safire

In pursuit of happiness, smart people often end up dumbing down themselves. ~ Erol Ozan

There is something inherently stupid about gentrified thinking. It's a dumbing down and smoothing over of what people are actually like. It's a social position rooted in received wisdom, with aesthetics blindly selected from the presorted offerings of marketing and without information or awareness about the structures that create its own delusional sense of infallibility. Gentrified thinking is like the bourgeois version of Christian fundamentalism, a huge, unconscious conspiracy of homogenous patterns with no awareness about its own freakishness. The gentrification mentality is rooted in the belief that obedience to consumer identity over recognition of lived experience is actually normal, neutral, and value free. ~ Sarah Schulman

And I can see that everything about this God has been purposely designed to poison our experience of life on earth, not to enhance it, to keep us fearful, to suppress knowledge, to curtail freedom and creativity, and to celebrate death. It's nothing less than the sanctified dumbing-down of the human race. And demanding respect for it is frankly an insult that deserves to be repaid with considerable interest. ~ Pat Condell

For Seabrook this 'nobrow' state - where the old brow distinctions no longer seem to apply - is not only a dumbing down of intellectual culture; it is also a wising up to commercial culture, which is no longer seen as an object of disdain but as 'a source of status.' At the same time this child of the elite is ambivalent about the collapse of brow distinctions, caught as he is between the old world of middlebrow taste, as vetted by The New Yorker of yore, and the new world of nobrow taste, where culture and marketing are one. ~ Hal Foster

You go in and meet the head of BBC One and get an assurance about not dumbing down. And then, of course a few months later, he's been replaced by someone you haven't met. ~ John Cleese

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

Many people who I respected were disappointed when I started 'Wine Library TV.' They thought I was dumbing down wine, but I always knew I was one of the biggest producers of new wine drinkers in the world, and people are realizing it now. ~ Gary Vaynerchuk

Advocates of dumbing down should note the wonderfully perverse fact that 'University Challenge' and 'Mastermind' were watched by millions who could hardly even understand the questions, let alone ejaculate the answers. Maybe they just liked to watch smart people sweating. ~ Declan Lynch

Radical Islam and fundamental Christianity have one goal, and that goal is total world domination. Radical Islam would accomplish this by killing all the infidels and apostates. Fundamental Christianity would accomplish this by dumbing down the entire human race via inaccurate understandings of history and science. ~ Al Stefanelli

This is the twenty-first century. The oceans are rising. Mad dictators have access to nuclear weapons. Corporatism and the dumbing down of the media have destroyed the very foundations of democracy. Anyone who isn't afraid is a moron." There ~ Tommy Wallach

I couldn't believe that last publisher. If you keep dumbing down art/products, the culture/consumers will remain dumb, maybe even regress. We'd have a country filled with idiots. Why not push people to be smarter? Is being smart a bad thing? Maybe we are in a dark age of some sort. Stupidity isn't only being encouraged, it's being cultivated. It's easier to make money and control people when they are dumber than you. After ~ D.B. Rouse

In Indian social-cultural-political discourse there is a general tendency to ignore deeper, intellectual thought, and the sensationalist mass media has actually contributed to a great dumbing down of even the educated masses. In this climate where any and all intellectuality has been mostly confined to a few ivory towers of academy, it is difficult to get even the educated and socio-economically privileged section of the society interested in the idea of exploring any deeper intellectual thought. It seems as if the trinity of pop-sociology, pop-psychology and pop-culture has taken over the general mentality of the society leaving little room for any serious, intellectually rigorous discourse on social-cultural phenomena. If at all, there is any serious attempt to think through and understand the observed phenomena, it is almost always done using the intellectual theories and frameworks developed in the Western academic circles. But this habit of non-thinking or thinking only in terms of borrowed categories must change if we want India to awaken to her innate intellectual potential. ~ Beloo Mehra

There's clearly a war against freedom of conscience happening, and the most resistant fighters are the chosen victims, in a deliberate, persistent and consistent dumbing down of the population. ~ Daniel Marques

In short, the age of the pulp magazine was the last in which youngsters, to get their primitive material, were forced to be literate. Now that is gone, and the youngsters have their glazed eyes fixed on the television tube. The result is clear. True literacy is becoming an arcane art, and the nation is steadily "dumbing down". ~ Isaac Asimov

There have been vast changes in the composition and role of the news media over the decades, and that is a cause for concern as well. When I first entered government nearly forty-eight years ago, three television networks and a handful of newspapers dominated coverage and, to a considerable degree, filtered the most extreme or vitriolic points of view. Today, with hundreds of cable channels, blogs, and other electronic media, too often the professional integrity and long-established standards and practices of journalists are diluted or ignored. Every point of view - including the most extreme - has a ready vehicle for rapid dissemination. And it seems the more vitriolic the opinion, the more attention it gets. This system is clearly more democratic and open, but I believe it has also fueled the coarsening and dumbing down of our national political dialogue. ~ Robert M. Gates

If we are going to compete in this world we're in today, there is no possible way we can do it with lowering expectations and dumbing down everything. Children are going to suffer, and families' hearts are going to be broken that their kids won't be able to get a job in the 21st Century. ~ Jeb Bush

Even when you're down, there is still hope. No matter how bad things get and no matter how small a hope there is, anything is better than nothing, No matter how bad things get, they can always, ALWAYS get worse. Take my word on that. ~ Christina Engela

September 11
We thought we'd outdistanced history
Told our children it was nowhere near;
Even when history struck Columbine,
It didn't happen here.
We took down the maps in the classroom,
And when they were safely furled,
We told the young what they wanted to hear,
That they were immune from a menacing world.
But history isn't a folded-up map,
Or an unread textbook tome;
Now we know history's a fireman's child
Waiting at home alone. ~ Richard Peck

Mr. Gruffydd turned to my father, and he blew the note on the reed pipe.

Ivor raised his finger, and from top of the Hill down to bottom men and women hummed softly to have the proper key, with sopranos going up to find the octave, and altos climbing, and tenors making silver and contraltos and baritones resting in comfort and basso down on the octave below, and the sound they all made was a life-time of loveliness, so solid, so warm, so deep, and yet so delicate. It will be no surprise to me if the flowers of the gardens of heaven are made from such sound. And O, to smell a smell as good to the nose as that sound sounds to the ear.

But even heaven could not be so beautiful, or we would all be drunk with beauty day and night, and no work done anywhere, and nobody to blame. Drunk with beauty. There is lovely. ~ Richard Llewellyn

Whenever he was out of luck and a little down-hearted, he would fall to mourning over the loss of a wonderful cat he used to own (for where women and children are not, men of kindly impulses take up with pets, for they must love something) ~ Mark Twain

Although leaves remained on the beeches and the sunshine was warm, there was a sense of growing emptiness over the wide space of the down. The flowers were sparser. Here and there a yellow tormentil showed in the grass, a late harebell or a few shreds of purple bloom on a brown, crisping tuft of self-heal. But most of the plants still to be seen were in seed. Along the edge of the wood a sheet of wild clematis showed like a patch of smoke, all its sweet-smelling flowers turned to old man's beard. The songs of the insects were fewer and intermittent. Great stretches of the long grass, once the teeming jungle of summer, were almost deserted, with only a hurrying beetle or a torpid spider left out of all the myriads of August. The gnats still danced in the bright air, but the swifts that had swooped for them were gone and instead of their screaming cries in the sky, the twittering of a robin sounded from the top of a spindle tree. The fields below the hill were all cleared. One had already been plowed and the polished edges of the furrows caught the light with a dull glint, conspicuous from the ridge above. The sky, too, was void, with a thin clarity like that of water. In July the still blue, thick as cream, had seemed close above the green trees, but now the blue was high and rare, the sun slipped sooner to the west and, once there, foretold a touch of frost, sinking slow and big and drowsy, crimson as the rose hips that covered the briar. As the wind freshened from the south, ~ Richard Adams

A woman could always count on her girl pals, Hope thought as she turned to the door. They never let you down. ~ Nora Roberts

The worship had already begun. It was my favorite part about the whole thing. There was something electric about everyone lifting their hands up to the ceiling as if they were trying to pull things down from heaven. They reached and they reached and I couldn't help but wish I would find a reason to reach my hands up too. ~ Hannah Brencher

I've often reflected on this in the past weeks as I've been following the presidential campaign: Very often, I thought it would have been great for both of these guys to sit down and be force-fed a couple of dozen episodes of Star Trek. ~ Patrick Stewart

I like marketplaces. I like train stations; I like being in trains. I like airports. I like walking down the street with a pen in my hand, writing, writing, writing. ~ Juan Felipe Herrera

Clarity and decisiveness come from the willingness to slow down, to listen to and look at what's happening. ~ Pema Chodron

We're trying to infuse a little good into the American culture. Love God, love your neighbor, hunt ducks. Raise your kids, make them behave, love them. I don't see the down side to that. ~ Phil Robertson

The greatest men that ever live pass away unknown. they put forth no claims for themselves, establish no schools of systems in their name. they never create or stir but just melt down into love ~ Tom Robbins

If they knocked two of your guys down, I'd get four. You have to protect your hitters. ~ Don Drysdale

But this was not all, for she soon found that the thread, after going straight down for a little way, turned first sideways in one direction, then sideways in another, and then shot, at various angles, hither and thither inside the heap, so that she began to be afraid that to clear the thread she must remove the whole huge gathering. She was dismayed at the very idea, but, losing no time, set to work with a will; and with aching back, and bleeding fingers and hands, she worked on, sustained by the pleasure of seeing the heap slowly diminish and begin to show itself on the opposite side of the fire. Another thing which helped to keep up her courage was that, as often as she uncovered a turn of the thread, instead of lying loose upon the stone, it tightened up; this made her sure that her grandmother was at the end of it somewhere. ~ George MacDonald

What a general could do, Thomas did; no more dependable soldier for a moment of crisis existed on the North American continent, or ever did exist ... Thomas comes down in history as the Rock of Chickamauga, the great defensive fighter, the man who could never be driven away but who was not much on the offensive. That may be a correct appraisal, Yet it may also be worth making note that just twice in all the war was a major Confederate army driven away from a prepared position in complete rout - at Chattanooga and at Nashville. Each time the blow that routed it was launched by Thomas. ~ Bruce Catton

It is a measure of a nation their cunning! It is a measure of a nation their strength! And it is a measure of a nation," I leaned forward and screeched, "their mercy!" I leaned back and surveyed the crowd and for some bizarre reason kept right on shouting. The condemned you see before you have been tried justly and meet their sentence fairly. They have done wrong and they will pay for it. But I am not the Winter Princess of a nation who does not see that even the condemned deserve to be treated with respect as they face death. You may think they do not deserve it but it is your duty as Lunwynians to rise above their actions
not
fall to their depths. They will hang for their crimes and you will watch this sentence carried out.How could that not be enough for you?"

I tore my eyes away from the now whispering crowd as those close sent my words far,feeling Frey's arm still tight around my middle but I ignored it and looked down at the scaffold.

Bring her to her feet," I ordered the guardstanding around Viola and they shifted andstared up at me in stupefaction so I snapped,"
Bring her to her feet!
"They jumped toward Viola who I avoidedlooking at as they helped her up and movedher to her noose. Instead, I looked back tothe crowd and, yep, you guessed it, kept right on shouting.
"Today, you witness something infinitely sad. Three people who have gone wrong somewhere in their lives, done wrong be-cause of it and therefore are paying t ~ Kristen Ashley

As my father talked, tears dripped down the side of his face like candle wax. The sight shocked me; until that moment, I had assumed men were as incapable of crying as they were of having babies. ~ Wally Lamb

But however secure and well-regulated civilized life may become, bacteria, Protozoa, viruses, infected fleas, lice, ticks, mosquitoes, and bedbugs will always lurk in the shadows ready to pounce when neglect, poverty, famine, or war lets down the defenses. ~ Hans Zinsser

Growth happens slowly, slow down today enjoy life without been in hurry ~ Martin Suarez

Too bad you got so bogged down in books. You've got the spirit of a warrior. ~ Richelle Mead

There are a few things as heartbreaking to me as seeing a person swimming in a T-shirt. And I can speak with the authority of someone who did it for years. It is conspicuous. It bogs you down. When you get out of the water, you take half the lake with you. It takes the fun out of swimming and puts a visual metaphor to the burdens of a negative body image. ~ Liz Prince

KEVIN: But there are many reasons we have to do our broadcasting from here.
LAUREN: It sends a message.
KEVIN: It sure does. It sends several fun messages for everyone to enjoy. Anyway, the boys in Sales, who are all named Shawn, came by and with their help I was able to make this studio feel a little more like home. They put up a bit of a fuss about the changes, but that's just because no one likes change. There are some people who don't understand progress, you know.
LAUREN: I'll miss the Shawns.
KEVIN: I'll miss them too, but look how much nicer this places looks. You can see the Shawns' contributions all over the desk.
LAUREN: And running down the walls. Yes, SO much nicer. ~ Joseph Fink

I don't give a rat's ass what you think, David! I'm tired of you bullying me, putting me down, patronizing me, treating me like some sort of simpleton. I was supposed to be a partner in this relationship – that's what I signed up for. Not this! ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

This breath, and this moment, and this life is a gift and we are all in this together. We all have countless choices every day to close down or stand up straight and open up, and take a big breath and say YES to the gift. ~ Rob Bell

Shame on the body for breaking down while the spirit perseveres. ~ John Dryden

If I could choose a gift, a blessing from a star,
I'd choose the simple way to get into your heart
I'd pick the words that heal your very hidden scar
And turn my every feeling into a work of art.

If I could pick you up, from deep down where you are,
I'd raise you to the stars and to the moon above
I'd take you for a walk in my unending world,
And let your soul unfold, with every single word. ~ Virgil Kalyana Mittata Iordache

The kids are interested in the music of them. They're not interested in mop-tops and Beatle boots and crazy suits. It's all down to the music now - that's what they hear, and that's what they love. ~ Ringo Starr

I'm very happy to have been a one-club man, but I wouldn't shoot down guys who have gone off and played in multiple clubs either because, essentially, it is an earning that people are after. ~ Brian O'Driscoll

The late-afternoon sky, in Paul's peripheral vision, panoramic and mostly unobstructed, appeared rural or suburban, more indicative of forests and fields and lakes - of nature's vast connections, through the air and the soil, to more of itself - than of outer space, which was mostly what Paul thought of when beneath an urban sky, even in daytime, especially in Manhattan, between certain buildings, framing sunless zones of upper atmosphere, as if inviting space down to deoxygenate a city block. ~ Tao Lin

Our talk had been serious and sober,
But our thoughts they were palsied and sere -
For we knew not the month was October,
And we marked not the night of the year -
(Ah, night of all nights in the year!)
We noted not the dim lake of Auber -
(Though once we had journeyed down here) -
Remembered not the dank tarn of Auber,
Nor the ghoul-haunted woodland of Weir. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

You don't look like a Rupert."
Startled,he raised a black brow at her. "Dare I ask what I look like to you?"
"A hungry wolf."
He didn't laugh at the description, but he did abruptly release her. "Wolf, perhaps," he said drily. "Hungry? Not at the moment."
She had enough sense to guess she'd just been insulted. Had she touched a nerve perhaps? Good,because he was certainly touching too many of hers.
Regaining her balance after stumbling back from him,she went to straighten her skirt in an indignant manner,but forgot she wasn't wearing one.How could she appear to be offended while she was wearing britches? She settled for grabbing the hat off the floor and shoving it back down on her head.
The very idea! Not hungry at the moment? As if she didn't know he was implying she wasn't to his taste. ~ Johanna Lindsey

I can smell the sex coming off you right now. I could take you down on this sidewalk and be up that skirt of yours in a heartbeat. And you wouldn't fight me, would you?"
"Now, we can be civilized and wait until we get home. Or we can get down to it right here. Either way, I'm dying to come inside of you again, and you're not going to say no." - Wrath to Beth ~ J.R. Ward

It now seems to be quite a thing to pull down the mighty from their seats and roll them in the mire. This practice deserves pronounced condemnation. Hero worship is a tremendous force in uplifting and strengthening. Humanity, let us have our heroes. Let us continue to believe that some have been truly great. ~ Lyndon B. Johnson

He tightens one arm around my waist and cups the back of my neck with the other. We stare at each other, his eyes dark and intense before his lips come down on mine in a kiss of fierce, tender possession.
And just like that, I fall wildly in love with my husband all over again. ~ Nina Lane

down. He realized he hadn't taken a single sip. ~ William Kent Krueger

I don't think the news department will have to lie down and play dead like it has in the past. By and large the network has been understanding, but then so have I. ~ Roone Arledge

Any goal can be achieved if you break it down into enough small parts. ~ Brian Tracy

Fuck! Sweat rolled down his spine as he covered the remaining distance at extreme speed.
She wasn't allowed to die, he thought, his rage dark red flame. Not until he'd flushed this vicious hunger for her from his system. ~ Nalini Singh

Some people are like slinkies. Not really good for much but bring a smile to your face when pushed down the stairs. ~ Anonymous

Imagine - Lord Seregil and Lord Alec slapped up in the Red Tower for common housebreaking? No one knows what we really are, or what we've done for Skala. It would just be shame and dishonor, and for what? Because some titled slip of a girl couldn't keep her skirts down on Mourning Night, then decided she wanted a proper marriage? For that, I risk losing you? ~ Lynn Flewelling