Jack Valenti Quotes

37 Sourced Quotes

I found the most convincing part to be the working stiffs, the guys who have a modest home and kids who go to public schools. They make $75,000 to $100,000 a year. That's not much to live on. I don't have to tell you that.

Jack Valenti
Never rise to your feet without having given thought to what you are going to say.

Jack Valenti
The basic mission of the rating system is a simple one: to offer to parents some advance information about movies so that parents can decide what movies they want their children to see or not to see. The entire rostrum of the rating program rests on the assumption of responsibility by parents.

Jack Valenti
We want to tell American parents that they and they alone have total power to control every hour of television programming that comes into their home.

Jack Valenti
We count it crucial to make regular soundings to find out how the public perceives the rating program, and to measure the approval and disapproval of what we are doing... The rating system isn't perfect but, in an imperfect world, it seems each year to match the expectations of those whom it is designed to serve — parents of America.

Jack Valenti
In a political struggle, never get personal else the dagger digs too deep. Your enemy today may need to be your ally tomorrow.

Jack Valenti
I hope people will say I never had a hidden agenda, and I never played it cute around the turns, and that my integrity stayed intact.

Jack Valenti
I wasn't opposed to the VCR. The MPAA tried to establish by law that the VCR was infringing on copyright. Then we would go to the Congress and get a copyright royalty fee put on all blank videocassettes and that would go back to the creators.

Jack Valenti
When I die, bury me in Texas because I want to remain politically active.

Jack Valenti
I sleep each night a little better, a little more confidently, because Lyndon Johnson is my president. For I know he lives and thinks and works to make sure that for all America and indeed, the growing body of the free world, the morning shall always come.

Jack Valenti
My own home, we do it in our on home. I know about that. Anybody that has a VCR, talk to them, and I ask you to use your own commonsense... If you had the power to sit on a playback of a recording and you could wipe out the commercials or not wipe out the commercials, what would you do?... We all do it.
But when you do it, you strip away the reason for free television.... As far as I am concerned, I am going to continue taping because the plaintiffs have said they aren't going to do anything to me. I am not committing any crime. They know that.

Jack Valenti
Nothing of value is free. It is very easy, Mr. Chairman, to convince people that it is in their best interest to give away somebody else's property for nothing, but even the most guileless among us know that this is a cave of illusion where commonsense is lured and then quietly strangled.

Jack Valenti
I don't know any other business that tells you not to go in and buy their product.

Jack Valenti
If you buy a DVD you have a copy. If you want a backup copy you buy another one.

Jack Valenti
If You Cannot Protect What You Own, You Don't Own Anything!

Jack Valenti
When you use a prepared text, never, never, never speak those words without first making them your friends through constant and persistent attention.

Jack Valenti
As you construct your speech, never forget that this is not an exercise in personal indulgence; you are striving to make contact with your audience.

Jack Valenti
Never try to speak merely from notes unless you know your subject cold.

Jack Valenti
I think lobbying is really an honest profession. Lobbying means trying to persuade Congress to accept your point of view. Sometimes you can give them a lot of facts they didn't have before.

Jack Valenti
You've already got a DVD. It lasts forever. It never wears out. In the digital world, we don't need back-ups, because a digital copy never wears out. It is timeless.

Jack Valenti
A public domain work is an orphan. No one is responsible for its life. But everyone exploits its use, until that time certain when it becomes soiled and haggard, barren of its previous virtues. How does the consumer benefit from the steady decline of a film's quality?

Jack Valenti
The only group in America that ought to be the final arbiters, the only group in America that deserves to scrutinize what we are doing, and then judge its worth... are parents.

Jack Valenti
On the Cable television industry:
A huge parasite in the marketplace, feeding and fattening itself off of local television stations and copyright owners of copyrighted material. We do not like it because we think it wrong and unfair.

Jack Valenti
If you design your own machine, you can't fuss at people, because you're one of just a few. How many Linux users are there?

Jack Valenti
We are facing a very new and a very troubling assault on our fiscal security, on our very economic life and we are facing it from a thing called the video cassette recorder and its necessary companion called the blank tape. And it is like a great tidal wave just off the shore. This video cassette recorder and the blank tape threaten profoundly the life-sustaining protection, I guess you would call it, on which copyright owners depend, on which film people depend, on which television people depend and it is called copyright.

Jack Valenti
I say to you that the VCR is to the American film producer and the American public as the Boston strangler is to the woman home alone.

Jack Valenti
Technology moves with terrifying speed. If the traffic rules are explicit and understandable, and accompanied by common-sense protective designs, this technology will be an incalculable boon to America, a shot in the arm to our international competitiveness, and a stimulus to our creative industries. If not, then the information superhighway, cyberspace, the Internet, call it what you will, technology will collapse the great wonder of intellectual property. The country will be the loser. Big time.

Jack Valenti
The Ninth Circuit Court decision was lucid, unambiguous, and consistent. The logic was clear and it said when you use copyrighted material on a video cassette recorder, it is an infringement of copyright.

Jack Valenti
I think politicians and movie actors and movie executives are similar in more ways than they're different. There is an egocentric quality about both; there is a very sensitive awareness of the public attitude, because you live or die on public favor or disfavor. There is the desire for publicity and for acclaim, because, again, that's part of your life... And in a strange and bizarre way, when movie actors come to Washington, they're absolutely fascinated by the politicians. And when the politicians go to Hollywood, they're absolutely fascinated by the movie stars. It's a kind of reciprocity of affection by people who both recognize in a sense they're in the same racket.

Jack Valenti
I really do believe we can stuff enough algorithms in a movie that only the dedicated hackers can spend the time and effort to try to plumb through those 1,000 algorithms to try to find a way to beat it.

Jack Valenti