Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.

We [Americans] suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in place of reality.

The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousness of our "deceivers" than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire to seduce than from the desire to be seduced.

Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.

Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.

What is more natural in a democratic age than that we should begin to measure the stature of a work of art-especially of a painting-by how widely and how well it is reproduced?

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.

A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services.

God is the Celebrity-Author of the Worlds Best Seller. We have made God into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.