Quotes: Team. Tears. Technology. Television.

Team
They were learning to become a team.
Team 25 They were learning a lot about each other, about their roles on the aircraft, learning to master their jobs and to trust in the skill and judgment of each man in the crew. Childers, Wings of Morning.

Teamwork 125 Teamwork is rare in intellectual or artistic undertakings. Hoffer, The True Believer

People team up by necessity.
Teamwork 453 Necessity reconciles and brings men together. Montaigne, Selected Essays.

Intellectuals think teamwork is a joke; it won WWII for our country.
Teamwork 13 Intellectuals go through a phase when “the team spirit” is a joke…I saw it win a war for my country. Sevareid, Not So Wild a Dream.

Some people believe that others need to work as teams, but they themselves cannot bear to attend a committee meeting.
Teamwork 225 I understood the paradox…of so many liberals and radicals on the “intellectual” side, who believe that men must work in groups, yet who cannot bear a committee meeting themselves.

Tears
Tears do not heal!
Tears 213 Achilles: Tears heal nothing…. Homer, Iliad.

Technology
We could be vulnerable to overindulgence if we come to rely too much on the information highway.
Technology 264 A more serious concern than individual overindulgence is the vulnerability that could result from society’s heavy reliance on the [information] highway. Gates, The Road Ahead.

Some day pocket technology will keep records of everything you do.
Technology 267 Your wallet PC will be able to keep audio, time, location, eventually even video records of everything that happens to you…the ultimate diary and autobiography. Gates, The Road Ahead.

The purpose of technology is to bring people together.
Technology 274 Antoine de Saint-Exupéry: Fifty years ago he wrote, “Transport of the mails, transport of the human voice, transport of flickering pictures—in this century as in others our highest accomplishments still have the single aim of bringing men together.” Gates, The Road Ahead.

Technology has made weather of no consequence to comfortable travel (than in the days of Jane Austen).
Technology 115 Mr. Elton: What an excellent device...the use of a sheep-skin for carriages....how very comfortable they make it;--impossible to feel cold with such precautions....the contrivances of modern days indeed have rendered a gentleman’s carriage perfectly complete....one is so fenced and guarded from the weather, that not a breath of air can find its way unpermitted....weather becomes absolutely of no consequence. Austen, Emma

The ultimate techno-ignoramus.
Technology 79 Dorothy Parker: I know so little about the typewriter that once I bought a new one because I couldn’t change the ribbon on the one I had. Cowley, ed., Writers at Work.

Housekeeping isn’t the trial it once was now that we have stoves.
Technology 153 “In old times when the houses were draftier they was troublesome about flickering, candles was; but land! think how comfortable we live now to what we used to…stoves is such a convenience; the fire’s so much handier…housekeepin’ don’t begin to be the trial it was once.” Jewett, A Country Doctor.

Thinking people must not be controlled by their technology.
Technology 58 Man Thinking must not be subdued by his instruments. Emerson, The American Scholar.

Technology for transmitting information seems destined only to promote small talk.
Technology and Communication 20 Given any new technology for transmitting information, we seem bound to use it for great quantities of small talk. L. Thomas, Lives of a Cell.

Television
Writing for TV requires entertainment; images control the sequence of ideas.
Television xv Writing for television is fundamentally different from writing a book...people who settle down to an evening’s viewing expect to be entertained...attention must be held by a carefully contrived series of images...the sequence of images controls the sequence of ideas. Clark, Civilization.

Writing for TV requires simplification to put it within the required time limit.
Television xv [Writing for television]: ...every subject must be simplified if it is to be presented in under an hour. Clark, Civilization.

Pictures and sound can do what can never be done on the printed page.
Television xv To take examples from one program only, ‘The Fallacies of Hope’: the sound of the Marsellaise and the prisoners’ chorus from Fidelio, and the marvelous photography of Rodin’s Burghers of Calais: all of these said what I wanted to say about the whole subject with a force and vividness which could never have been achieved by the printed page. Clark, Civilization.

Could not make law and philosophy visually interesting.
Television xvi Even the most rapid survey of civilization should have said more than I have done about law and philosophy...could not think of any way of making them visually interesting. Clark, Civilization.

Tantalize the poor with the world on TV and then slam the door on that world in their faces.
Television 607 JFK: …give them a world on a television screen and slam the door in their faces…. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days

TV seems to show that the world’s problems can be solved by guns.
Television 689 Every day the television industry instructed the children of the nation how easily problems could be solved by revolver shots. Schlesinger, A Thousand Days