QuoteProject
It seems to me that television is exactly like a gun. Your enjoyment of it is determined by which end of it you're on.
Alfred Hitchcock
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

Television can be viewed positively or negatively depending on the perspective of the viewer.

Alfred Hitchcock's quote compares television to a gun, suggesting that the experience of television is subjective and heavily influenced by one's viewpoint. Just as a gun can be used for both harmful and beneficial purposes depending on who wields it, television can either be a source of entertainment and knowledge or a tool for distraction and misinformation, emphasizing the importance of critical consumption.

Themes

TelevisionPerspectiveSubjectivityMediaEnjoyment

In practice

Example use cases

In a discussion about the impact of media on society, you might say, 'As Hitchcock rightly pointed out, television is much like a gun; it really depends on whose hands it's in.'

More from Alfred Hitchcock

Dialogue should simply be a sound among other sounds, just something that comes out of the mouths of people whose eyes tell the story in visual terms.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Luck is everything... My good luck in life was to be a really frightened person. I'm fortunate to be a coward, to have a low threshold of fear, because a hero couldn't make a good suspense film.
Alfred HitchcockRead
I can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.
Alfred HitchcockRead
I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
Alfred HitchcockRead
Seeing a murder on television can help work off one's antagonisms. And if you haven't any antagonisms, the commercials will give you some.
Alfred HitchcockRead
There is something more important than logic: imagination
Alfred HitchcockRead

Similar quotes

If you are interested in ideas, radio is way more pure than television. You're not distracted by somebody's nose or hair or posture. You can really see how someone thinks and penetrate to the essence of who that person is.
Terry GrossRead
In some ways, I had a traditional 'old South' upbringing, meaning that I spent some time in a military school, and acquired an inoculum of the military ethic that is still with me today: honor, duty, loyalty.
E. O. WilsonRead
One is always at home in one's past.
Vladimir NabokovRead
As for oblivion, well, we can wait a little while for that.
Anne RiceRead
It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us.
H. G. WellsRead
Yes, President Romney will not take God off our coins. And that is so important because right now, just like God, the value of our currency really has to be taken on faith.
Stephen ColbertRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.