Top 15 Rod Serling Quotes

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

Being like everybody is the same as being nobody.

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

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

There is a fifth dimension beyond that which is known to man ... a dimension as vast as space and as timeless as infinity. It is 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.

Any state, any entity, any ideology that fails to recognize the worth, the dignity, the rights of man, that state is obsolete

This highway leads to the shadowy tip of reality: you're on a through route to the land of the different, the bizarre, the unexplainable...Go as far as you like on this road. Its limits are only those of mind itself. Ladies and Gentlemen, you're entering the wondrous dimension of imagination. . .
Next stop The Twilight Zone.

...the worst aspect of our time is prejudice... In almost everything I've written, there is a thread of this - man's seemingly palpable need to dislike someone other than himself.

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

All the Dachaus must remain standing. The Dachaus, the Belsens, the Buchenwalds, the Auschwitzes -all of them. They must remain standing because they are a monument to a moment in time when some men decided to turn the earth into a graveyard, into it they shoveled all of their reason, their logic, their knowledge, but worst of all their conscience. And the moment we forget this, the moment we cease to be haunted by its rememberance. Then we become the grave diggers.

"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 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.
[closing narration: "The Monsters Are Due on Maple Street", Twilight Zone episode aired March 4, 1960"

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

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.

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

You unlock this door with the key of imagination. Beyond it is another dimension: a dimension of sound, a dimension of sight, a dimension of mind. You’re moving into a land of both shadow and substance, of things and ideas. You’ve just crossed over into… the Twilight Zone.