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.
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.
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
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
All quotes βLuck 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.
I can't read fiction without visualizing every scene. The result is it becomes a series of pictures rather than a book.
I am a typed director. If I made Cinderella, the audience would immediately be looking for a body in the coach.
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.
There is something more important than logic: imagination
Similar quotes
Whoever be the instruments of any good to us, of whatever sort, we must look above them, and eye the hand and counsel of God in it, which is the first spring, and be duly thankful to God for it. And whatever evil of crosses or afflictions befalls us, we must look above the instruments of it to God.
Socrates and Plato are right: whatever man does he always does well, that is, he does that which seems to him good (useful) according to the degree of his intellect, the particular standard of his reasonableness.
Chaos of thought and passion, all confused; Still by himself abused or disabused; Created half to rise, and half to fall; Great lord of all things, yet a prey to all; Sole judge of truth, in endless error hurled,- The glory, jest, and riddle of the world.
Sometimes breaking the rules is extending the rules.
Islamophobia, in all its guises, seeks to minimise the importance of the individual and maximise the importance of the group. Yet our instinctive stance ought to be one of suspicion towards such endeavours. For individuals are undeniably real. Groups, on the other hand, are assertions of opinion.
I think about never losing my voice, never giving in, never selling out, always keeping black, always sticking to the street. Staying neighborhood and not Hollywood.