y#715

"... this is no longer a nation of independent individuals.
It's a nation of some 200-odd million transistorized, deodorized, whiter-that-white, steel-belted bodies, totally unnecessary as human beings, and as replaceable as piston rods...
Well, the time has come to say, is dehumanization such a bad word. Because good or bad, that's what is so.
The whole world is becoming humanoid - creatures that look human but aren't. The whole world not just us.
We're just the most advanced country, so we're getting there first...

So, you listen to me. Listen to me: Television is not the truth! Television is a God-damned amusement park!
Television is a circus, a carnival, a travelling troupe of acrobats, storytellers, dancers, singers, jugglers, side-show freaks, lion tamers, and football players.
We're in the boredom-killing business!
So if you want the truth... Go to God! Go to your gurus! Go to yourselves! Because that's the only place you're ever going to find any real truth.


... We deal in illusions, man! None of it is true! But you people sit there, day after day, night after night, all ages, colors, creeds... We're all you know.
You're beginning to believe the illusions we're spinning here. You're beginning to think that the tube is reality, and that your own lives are unreal.
You do whatever the tube tells you! You dress like the tube, you eat like the tube, you raise your children like the tube, you even think like the tube!
This is mass madness, you maniacs! In God's name, you people are the real thing! We are the illusion!
So turn off your television sets. Turn them off now. Turn them off right now. Turn them off and leave them off!
Turn them off right in the middle of the sentence I'm speaking to you now! TURN THEM OFF!


... Because less than three percent of you people read books...
... the only truth you know is what you get over this tube.
Right now, there is a whole, an entire generation that never knew anything..."

~ Howard Beale (Network, 1976)