Quotes About the Radio

Because we’re always listening

I often wish I was around during the old time radio heyday, and I imagine what it must have been like sitting around an oversized sound contraption, listening to the latest comedy, thriller, or horror story. But growing up, there was no “The War of the Worlds” to scare the crap out of me, so I had to settle for music — which of course is a wonderful thing. No matter what your radio listening style is, these quotes are a celebration of the invention that tickles our ears and brains with sound.

1. “TV gives everyone an image, but radio gives birth to a million images in a million brains.” -Peggy Noonan 2. “Radio is for driving.” -Ira Glass 3. “Television, radio, and all the sources of amusement and information that surround us in our daily lives are also artificial props. They can give us the impression that our minds are active, because we are required to react to stimuli from the outside. But the power of those external stimuli to keep us going is limited. They are like drugs. We grow used to them, and we continuously need more and more of them. Eventually, they have little or no effect. Then, if we lack resources within ourselves, we cease to grow intellectually, morally, and spiritually. And when we cease to grow, we begin to die.” -Mortimer J. Adler

4. “Cooking is a way of listening to the radio.” -Brian Eno

5. “Radio affects most intimately, person-to-person, offering a world of unspoken communication between writer-speaker and the listener.” -Marshall McLuhan

6. “The power of radio is not that it speaks to millions, but that it speaks intimately and privately to each one of those millions.” -Hallie Flanagan

7. “If it weren’t for Philo T. Farnsworth, inventor of television, we’d still be eating frozen radio dinners.” -Johnny Carson 8. “Radio is so fragmented, it’s unbelievable.” -Bob Seger

9. “Insect life was so loud that when you parked the car and got out, it sounded as if you had suddenly tuned into a radio frequency from another planet.” -David Samuels

10. “It’s so sweet, I feel like my teeth are rotting when I listen to the radio.” -Bono

11. “That was the big thing when I was growing up, singing on the radio. The extent of my dream was to sing on the radio station in Memphis. Even when I got out of the Air Force in 1954, I came right back to Memphis and started knocking on doors at the radio station.” -Johnny Cash

12. “Radio is the most intimate and socially personal medium in the world.” -Harry von Zell

13. “Gossip is the Devil’s radio.” -George Harrison

14. “Radio is such a perfect medium for the transmission of poetry, primarily because there just is the voice, there’s no visual distraction.” -Billy Collins 15. “For a moment the radio wavered between stations and I was so busy making myself marvelous.” -S. Jane Sloat

16. “I spent many a summer early morning with the radio very low, half sleeping and half listening.” -Frankie Valli

17. “Radio, newspapers, they were normal parts of my life. In those days, you had to go somewhere to watch television and leave something to see it.” -Robert Redford

18. “Radio is the playground of coincidence.” -Sarah Vowell

19. “I prefer radio to TV because the pictures are better.” -Alistair Cooke

20. “It’s not true I had nothing on. I had the radio on.” -Marilyn Monroe

21. “Television contracts the imagination and radio expands it.” -Terry Wogan 22. “Radio was, in a way, a very philosophical medium. You could make an argument on the radio, and people listened to it. Television is already harder because people’s attention span becomes shorter with television. Cut to a commercial and all that.” -Martha C. Nussbaum

23. “The powerful chords that emanated from the radio heated me from the inside out, like a microwave.” -Sandy Ward Bell

24. “I really suggest listening to talk radio. I mean, if you just listen to what the talk hosts are saying, they sound like they are lunatics.” -Noam Chomsky

25. “The only way I’d be caught without makeup is if my radio fell in the bathtub while I was taking a bath and electrocuted me and I was in between makeup at home. I hope my husband would slap a little lipstick on me before he took me to the morgue.” -Dolly Parton

26. “Radio is dumb until the listener hears what radio says.” -Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

27. “That and the music was blaring. So loud that the radio station asked if they could keep it down as they cared about the safety of their listeners.” -J.S. Mason

28. “We are all shaped by the content we absorb. Like a radio tuned into the station of life. When you select the best content, you absorb greatness.” -Alex G Zarate

29. “Listening to radio was like group meditation or a moment of silence in church. You can’t get the same effect with TV unless you’re very drunk.” -Jackson Beck

30. “Radio was supposed to die in 1945, when TV came along. It turns out that radio grew and grew, and it’s a bigger business today than it has ever been.” -Alex Blumberg

31. “Somebody once said I had a face for radio and a voice for newspapers.” -Jerry Springer

32. “Radio is more powerful the closer we mimic the way we actually speak to each other. That’s why Howard Stern is such a great radio talent. People on his show are actually speaking to each other. You might not like what they’re saying, but they’re real conversations.” -Ira Glass

33. “Because you have things like American Idol and you’ve got radio stations that play music made entirely by computers, it’s easy to forget there are bands with actual people playing actual instruments that rock.” -Dave Grohl

34. “We all broadcast at a different frequency. Don’t be afraid to scan the dial until you find yours.” -Elvis Duran

35. “I strongly encourage listening to the radio to hear something you haven’t heard before. It’s a very healthy thing to do. It’s strange: Unless you reload your iPods every couple of weeks, you’re listening to and recycling the same music all of the time. I’m serious. Listen to your radio station.” -Alvin Lee

36. “With radio, the listener absorbs everything.” -Bob Edwards

37. “Good evening, ladies and gentleman. My name is Orson Welles. I am an actor. I am a writer. I am a producer. I am a director. I am a magician. I appear onstage and on the radio. Why are there so many of me and so few of you?” -Orson Welles

38. “The radio was an improvement on the telegraph, but it didn’t have the same exponential, transformative effect.” -Alison Gopnik

39. “Radio is the theater of the mind; television is the theater of the mindless.” -Steve Allen

40. “Radio listeners are voyeurs: lurking, invisible, eavesdropping.” -Paul Fleischman

41. “Anytime in radio that you can reach somebody on an emotional level, you’re really connecting.” -Casey Kasem

42. “In radio, you have two tools. Sound and silence.” -Ira Glass 43. “Radio, which was a much better medium than television will ever be, was easy and pleasant to listen to. Your mind filled automatically with images.” -Dick Cavett

44. “Television is all right, I’ve nothing against it, but I don’t like how it turns you away from the rest of the world and toward nothing but its own glassy self. In that one way, at least, radio was better.” -Stephen King

45. “Watching television in those days was not the same experience as it is today. After years of listening to radio, we found the black-and-white images mesmerizing.” -Annette Funicello

46. “The great improvement of the radio over the telephone is that it may be turned off without offending the speaker.” -Richard Armour

47. “I like doing radio because it’s so intimate. The moment people hear your voice, you’re inside their heads, not only that, you’re in there laying eggs.” -Douglas Coupland 48. “Prepare for a radio, for nothing is silent like the grave.” -Bangambiki Habyarimana

49. “When radio keeps silent, our ears shall never hear the real details!” -Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

50. “Radio…that wonderful invention by which I can reach millions of people…who fortunately can’t reach me.” -Milton Berle

More from Kiki Wellington:

Sources:

Quotes about Listening to the Radio. Quote Master. https://www.quotemaster.org/listening+to+the+radio

Radio Quotes. BrainyQuote. https://www.brainyquote.com/topics/radio-quotes

Radio Quotes. Goodreads. https://www.goodreads.com/quotes/tag/radio

Radio Sayings and Quotes. Wise Sayings. https://www.wisesayings.com/radio-quotes/

World Radio Day. UNESCO. http://www.unesco.org/new/en/unesco/events/prizes-and-celebrations/celebrations/international-days/world-radio-day-2012/quotes-on-radio/