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, Los Angeles Times, 1967
There is a fifth dimesion, beyond that which is known to man. It is a dimesion as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is in the middle ground between light and shadow, between science and superstition, and it lies between the pit of man's fears and the summit of his knowledge. This is the dimension of imagination. It is an area which we call the Twilight Zone.
ROD SERLING, introduction, The Twilight Zone (season 1)
You're traveling through another dimension, a dimension not only of sight and sound but of mind. A journey into a wondrous land whose boundaries are that of imagination. That's the signpost up ahead - your next stop, the Twilight Zone!
ROD SERLING, introduction, The Twilight Zone (season 2)
I think the destiny of all men is not to sit in the rubble of their own making but to reach out for an ultimate perfection which is to be had. At the moment, it is a dream. But as of the moment we clasp hands with our neighbor, we build the first span to bridge the gap between the young and the old. At this hour, it’s a wish. But we have it within our power to make it a reality. If you want to prove that God is not dead, first prove that man is alive.
ROD SERLING, speech at Moorpark College, Dec. 3, 1968
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 only 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 of 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, "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street," The Twilight Zone, Mar. 6, 1960
It is said that science fiction and fantasy are two different things. Science fiction is the improbable made possible, and fantasy is the impossible made probable.
ROD SERLING, The Twilight Zone, 1962
It’s hardly a revelation to me that the young people in this country take a dim view of our current up-tightness when it comes to street rioting. They believe, and I think quite properly, that on the scale of misbehavior the black man who takes a torch to a building or breaks a window to loot, and does so out of passion, is less the criminal than the white man who puts his torch to human beings and does so with a cold, calculated, predatory pre-planned blueprint of destruction.
ROD SERLING, speech at Moorpark College, Dec. 3, 1968
Hollywood's a great place to live ... if you're a grapefruit.
ROD SERLING, 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.
ROD SERLING, Rod Serling: Submitted for Your Approval
It's simply a national acknowledgement that in any kind of priority, the needs of human beings must come first. Poverty is here and now.... And if we don't respond to it -- we may well wind up sitting amidst our own rubble, looking for the truck that hit us -- or the bomb that pulverized us. Get the license number of whatever it was that destroyed the dream. And I think we will find that the vehicle was registered in our own name.
ROD SERLING, Commencement Address at the University of Southern California, March 17, 1970
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, speech at Binghamton Community High School, 1968
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