Rod Serling Quotes

Every Superstate has one iron rule: logic is an enemy and the truth is a menace.

We're developing a new citizenry. One that will be very selective about cereals and automobiles, but won't be able to think.

In almost everything I've written there is a thread of this: man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.

There is nothing in the dark that isn't there when the lights are on.

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of Man, that state is obsolete.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.

I found that it was all right to have Martians saying things Democrats and Republicans could never say.

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.

for civilization to survive, the human race has to remain civilized.

Coming up with ideas is the easiest thing on earth. Putting them down is the hardest.

There are weapons that are simply thoughts. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy.

Imagination... its limits are only those of the mind itself.

Every writer is a frustrated actor who recites his lines in the hidden auditorium of his skull.

According to the Bible, God created the heavens and the Earth. It is man’s prerogative - and woman’s - to create their own particular and private hell.

If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.

If you have the temerity to try to dramatize a theme that involves any particular social controversy currently extant. . . then you're in deep trouble.

Some people possess talent, others are possessed by it. When that happens, a talent becomes a curse.

It may be said with a degree of assurance that not everything that meets the eye is as it appears.

You unlock the door with the key of imagination.

Ideas are born from what is smelled, heard, seen, experienced, felt, emotionalized.

All the Dachaus must remain standing.

I'm afraid that if I started to ponder who I am and what I am, I might not like what I find.

The ultimate obscenity is not caring, not doing something about what you feel, not feeling! Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.

Fantasy is the impossible made probable. Science Fiction is the improbable made possible.

Justice can span years. Retribution is not subject to a calendar.

Our greatest responsibility is not to be pencils of the past.

Writing is a demanding profession and a selfish one. And because it is selfish and demanding, because it is compulsive and exacting, I didn't embrace it. I succumbed to it.

If you need drugs to be a good writer, you are not a good writer.

The writer's role is to menace the public's conscience. He must have a position, a point of view. He must see the arts as a vehicle of social criticism and he must focus on the issues of his time.

You see. No shock. No engulfment. No tearing assunder. What you feared would come like an explosion is like a whisper. What you thought was the end is the beginning.

Bias and prejudice make me angry...more than anything.

I don't enjoy any of the process of writing. I enjoy it when it goes on if it zings and it has great warmth and import and it's successful.

Hollywood's a great place to live... if you're a grapefruit.

If in any quest for magic, in any search for sorcery, witchery, legerdemain, first check the human spirit.

Whenever you write, whatever you write, never make the mistake of assuming the audience is any less intelligent than you are.

Somewhere between apathy and anarchy lies the thinking human being.

a basic “must” for every writer: A simple solitude-physical & mental.

There are millions of ways to not be writing. You say you're not in the mood, you'll pick it up tomorrow.

I'd rather go along with this sense of illusion that I'm a neutral beast going along through life doing everything that's preordained.

How can you put on a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper?

Now death is with us in such abundance and hovers over us in so massive a form that we don't have time to invent a mythology, nor is our creativity directed toward same. Now it's to prevent death.

Just drawing back and drawing in; becoming narcissistic.

I would guess that the price of the script really is secondary. The credit is much more the essence.

But it makes you wonder, doesn't it? Just how normal are we? Just who are the people we nod our hellos to as we pass on the street? A rather good question to ask - particularly in The Twilight Zone.

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.

I don't have any system. I dictate a lot, through a machine, and I also have a secretary. But I used to type just like everybody else.

I choose to think of tv audience as nameless, formless, faceless people who are all like me. And anything that I write, if I like it, they'll like it.

If it sounds good as you say it, likely as not it'll sound good when an actor's saying it.

I remember the first sale I made was a hundred and fifty dollars for a radio script, and, as poor as I was, I didn't cash the check for three months. I kept showing it to people.

I don't know what my friends do. Generally they become producers. That way they can stop writing!