WIST

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.

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American writer
(Attributed)
Unsourced. An alternate (parallel?) quote from the documentary Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval: "How can you put out a meaningful drama when every fifteen minutes proceedings are interrupted by twelve dancing rabbits with toilet paper? No dramatic art form should be dictated and controlled by men whose training and instincts are cut of an entirely different cloth. The fact remains that these gentlemen sell consumer goods, not an art form."

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

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American writer
(Attributed)

The tools of conquest do not necessarily come with bombs and explosions and fallout. There are weapons that are simply thoughts, attitudes, prejudices — to be found in the minds of men. For the record, prejudices can kill and suspicion can destroy, and a thoughtless, frightened search for a scapegoat has a fallout all its own — for the children and the children yet unborn. And the pity of it is that these things cannot be confined to the Twilight Zone.

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American writer
The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street (1960)

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

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American writer
Vogue (1 Apr 1957)

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

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American writer
Interview, Los Angeles Times (1967)

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.

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American writer
Speech at Binghamton Community High School (1968)

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.

Rod Serling (1924-1975) American writer
Speech at Moorpark College, California (3 Dec 1968)