Rodman E. "Rod" Serling (December 25, 1924 - June 28, 1975) was an American screenwriter, playwright, television producer, and narrator best known for his live television dramas of the 1950s and his science fiction anthology TV series, The Twilight Zone. Serling was active in politics, both on and off the screen, and helped form television industry standards. He was known as the "angry young man" of Hollywood, clashing with television executives and sponsors over a wide range of issues including censorship, racism, and war. (Click here for full Wikipedia article)
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A medium (television) best suited to illumine and dramatize the issues of the times has its product pressed into a mold, painted lily-white, and has its dramatic teeth yanked out one by one.
Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete.
Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.
Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.
Everybody has to have a hometown... For whatever else I may have had, or lost, or will find— I've still got a hometown. This, nobody's gonna take away from me.
For every man who goes up, someone has to leave. And when the departure of the aged is neither philosophical nor graceful, there's an aching poignancy in the changing of the guard.
Hollywood's a great place to live... if you're a grapefruit.
I ask for your indulgence when I march out quotations. This is the double syndrome of men who write for a living and men who are over forty. The young smoke pot- we inhale from our Bartlett's.
I happen to think that the singular evil of our time is prejudice. It is from this evil that all other evils grow and multiply. In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: a man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.
I was a Christmas present that was delivered unwrapped.
If survival calls for the bearing of arms, bear them you must. But the most important part of the challenge is for you to find another means that does not come with the killing of your fellow man.
If you need drugs to be a good writer, you're not a good writer.
If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.
If you write, fix pipes, grade papers, lay bricks or drive a taxi- do it with a sense of pride. And do it the best you know how. Be cognizant and sympathetic to the guy alongside, because he wants a place in the sun, too. And always...always look past his color, his creed, his religion and the shape of his ears. Look for the whole person. Judge him as the whole person.
It is difficult to produce a television documentary that is both incisive and probing when every twelve minutes one is interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits singing about toilet paper.
Never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
On The Twilight Zone, I knew that I could get away with Martians saying things that Republicans and Democrats couldn't.
Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.
Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.
There is a fifth dimension, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is in the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition.
There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.
We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.
Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.
Categories: Quotes of the day, Rod Serling
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