Quotes & Sayings About Lowest Common Denominator

The more repression there is, the more need there is for irreverence toward those who are responsible for that repression. But too often sarcasm passes for irony, name-calling passes for insight, bleeped-out four-letter words pass for wit, and lowest-common-denominator jokes pass for analysis. Satire should have a point of view. It doesn't have to get a belly laugh. It does have to present criticism. — Paul Krassner

The office was a treasure trove for those who delighted in the macabre. It was the Smithsonian of the Lowest Common Denominator. My — Kenneth C. Johnson

One must avoid snobbery and misanthropy. But one must also be unafraid to criticise those who reach for the lowest common denominator, and who sometimes succeed in finding it. This criticism would be effortless if there were no "people" waiting for just such an appeal. Any fool can lampoon a king or a bishop or a billionaire. A trifle more grit is required to face down a mob, or even a studio audience that has decided it knows what it wants and is entitled to get it. And the fact that kings and bishops and billionaires often have more say than most in forming appetites and emotions of the crowd is not irrelevant, either. — Christopher Hitchens

We have a lowest-common-denominator Christianity being taught in so many denominations that has produced a people who simply do not know some of the most basic Christian truths. — Albert Mohler

Radio football is football reduced to its lowest common denominator. — Nick Hornby

Moralism and ignorance are responsible for the constant stereotyping of prostitutes by their lowest common denominator
the sick, strung-out addicts, couched on city stoops, who turn tricks for drug money ... The most successful prostitutes in history have been invisible. That invisibility was produced by their high intelligence, which gives them the power to perceive, and move freely but undetected in the social frame. The prostitute is a superb analyst, not only in evading the law but in initiating the unique constellation of convention and fantasy that produces a stranger's orgasm. She lives by her wits as much as her body. She is a psychologist, actor, and dancer, a performance artist of hyper-developed sexual imagination. — Camille Paglia

Some people say Larry the Cable Guy's only successful because he's pandering to the lowest common denominator, blatantly and not ironically exploiting people's racist and homophobic tendencies. Don't listen to these people, Larry. They're just bitter and jealous and right. — Greg Giraldo

Be mindful of your social environment. By nature, the group you hang-out with will develop a common behavior and mindset. This behavior usually gravitates towards the lowest common denominator. Choose your group wisely. — Steve Maraboli

The lowest common denominator of the universe is both low and common. — R.A. Lafferty

Email is the lowest common denominator. It's the way you get communications from one person to another. There isn't really an alternative. Sometimes people will have Facebook messenger turned on, but 99 percent of the time, if you're sending a message to a human you don't know well, you're using email. — Stewart Butterfield

Simply put, I believe we should not seek the lowest common denominator when it comes to wilderness and saddle a wilderness designation with exceptions, exclusions, and exemptions. — Nick Rahall

Children are prepared for democracy by being led to discuss current events without first learning the systematic subjects (politics, economics, history) which are necessary in order to discuss them. The Mole effect is to substitute slogans and superficial opinion for considered individual thought. And the opinion is that of the lowest common denominator of the group. — Murray Rothbard

The thing is to be brave and move the audience with you, instead of cater to the lowest common denominator, you know, slipping on a banana peel and falling on your ass. You got to move the audience a little further ahead in terms of their appreciation of what is comedy. It's complicated. — Mel Brooks

What happens in the Senate is the Republicans sink to the lowest common denominator. — Jim DeMint

If anything, 'Fifty Shades of Grey' is a generic romance cynically engineered to appeal to the lowest common denominator of female fantasy. — Meghan Daum

We do not seek the unanimity that comes to those who water down all issues to the lowest common denominator - or to those who conceal their differences behind fixed smiles - or to those who measure unity by standards of popularity and affection, instead of trust and respect. We are allies. This is a partnership, not an empire. We are bound to have differences and disappointments - and we are equally bound to bring them out into the open, to settle them where they can be settled, and to respect each other's views when they cannot be settled. — John F. Kennedy

Television creates loneliness. This is why sitcoms have added laughter tracks which try to cheat you out of your solitude. Television is a reflection of the world in which we live, designed to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It kills spontaneous imagination and destroys our ability to entertain ourselves, painfully erasing our patience and sensitivity to significant detail. — Paul Cronin

English should not stoop to embrace the lowest common denominator. Rather, society should step up and grant the language the respect it deserves. — Terry Fallis

... the extent to which a society focuses on the needs of its lowest common denominator is the extent to which that society'll be mired in mediocrity. Whereas, if we would aim the bulk of our support at the brightest, most talented, most virtuous instead, then they would have the wherewithal to solve a lot of our problems, to uplift the whole culture, enlighten it or something, so that eventually there wouldn't be so many losers and weaklings impeding evolution and dragging the whole species down ... . Martyrs ... just perpetuate human misery by catering to it ... . Individuals have to take responsibility for their own lives and accept the consequences of their choices. — Tom Robbins

I like to think that Junie B. looks at the world - and this isn't a negative comment on her - from the lowest common denominator. It's not all gray to her; it's all black and white. — Barbara Park

So much of the humor on new sitcoms plays to the lowest common denominator. Wit isn't nearly given as much attention as slipping on a banana peel. So much of the writing is so coarse, so obvious that it doesn't provide a shock, never mind a laugh. What makes something funny is alluding to it without laying it out explicitly. You let the audiences fill in the gaps and that's where the laughs come. — Betty White

The dumbing down of American is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30 second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. — Carl Sagan

I want to say to anyone who works in a drone workplace, raise the bar! There's no reason why you have to dress to the lowest common denominator. — Tim Gunn

Think of it: the lowest common denominator in being digital is not your operating system, modem, or model of computer. It's a tiny piece of plastic, designed decades ago by Bell Labs' Charles Krumreich, Edwin Hardesty, and company, who thought they were making an inconspicuous plug for a few telephone handsets. Not in their wildest dreams was Registered Jack 11 - a modular connector more commonly known as the RJ-11 - meant to be plugged and unplugged so many times, by so many people, for so many reasons, all over the world. — Nicholas Negroponte

His definition of friendship had been grounded on the lowest common denominator, an absence of animosity. He — Henning Mankell

Maybe I'm too close to the two Democrats to be against either one. I went to law school with Barack Obama and worked in the Clinton White House, so I have connections and allegiances to both candidates [ ... ] But I cannot remain silent any longer while my own senator destroys the Democratic Party, and her own reputation, in a desperate and degrading effort to appeal to the lowest common denominator. It's time for Senator Clinton to act like a leader that I know she can be. Hillary Clinton not only needs to defend Barack Obama, she needs to apologize to him. — Keith Boykin

For too long we've been suffering the tyranny of lowest-common-denominator fare, subjected to brain-dead summer blockbusters and manufactured pop. Why? Economics. Many of our assumptions about popular taste are actually artifacts of poor supply-and-demand matching - a market response to inefficient distribution. — Chris Anderson

Is an institution always a man's shadow shortened in the sun, the lowest common denominator of everybody in it? — Randall Jarrell

To me, religion is the Walmart of spirituality ... I mean it's prepackaged. Lowest common denominator. People just have to follow the present motions and rituals and rules. The don't have to think about how the words reconcile with their own hearts. Their own experience. — Bill Konigsberg

I prefer to regard myself as one who has the ability and the mental and nervous equipment to make his own laws and act according to them rather than accept the laws that suit the lowest common denominator of the people. — Ian Fleming

I examine it [pain] every which way. Why do I really feel this way? What's going on here? I have to really explore it all the way out, drill it down to its lowest common denominator and go, Oh! That's what that is. I'm feeling insecure. Or, Oh! God has something better for me. — Kim Coles

If you fear making anyone mad, then you ultimately probe for the lowest common denominator of human achievement. — Jimmy Carter

I like art with a sense of humor. I don't have a huge art education to understand everything. I don't think that means that art has to be watered down to the lowest common denominator, though. I don't think you have to go to college to be able appreciate great art, but I like art that doesn't take itself too seriously. — Kathleen Hanna

Something economically changed. It used to be that you needed 20 million people to watch a TV show for it to be a hit. Now, with just a few million people watching, you're considered very successful, for a lot of these streaming services, or cable channels. Now, that allows people to do much more creatively ambitious work, because it's not lowest common denominator. — Judd Apatow

Richard Foster is justified in writing: I am concerned that our reading and our writing is gravitating to the lowest common denominator so completely that the great themes of majesty and nobility and felicity are made to seem trite, puny, pedestrian. . . . I am concerned about the state of the soul in the midst of all the cheap sensory overload going on today. You see, without what Alfred North Whitehead called "an habitual vision of greatness," our soul will shrivel up and lose the capacity for beauty and mystery and transcendence. . . . — John Piper

I don't see any point in having a public service broadcaster which attempts to compete with the commercial sector. Obviously part of its remit is to entertain, but entertainment doesn't necessarily mean scraping the bottom of the barrel and appealing to the very lowest common denominator. — Jonathan Meades

To me, elitism means a love of excellence and superiority, but America has declared war on both and developed a sick love of the lowest common denominator to make sure no-one becomes too fine for our touted democracy. We are almost at the point of regarding every virtue as elitist. — Florence King

I think horror can and should be classy. I enjoy seeing it raised up not lowered down to the lowest common denominator.
There's prejudice against the horror genre and I think sometimes that's the fault of the authors involved. — Carole Gill

Segregation or separation is thus a basic principle of Biblical Law with respect to religion and morality. Every attempt to destroy this principle is an effort to reduce society to its lowest common denominator. — R.J. Rushdoony

Youth leaders, are you holding aloft our standards, or have you compromised them for the lowest common denominator in order to appease the deceived or vile within the Church? Are the dances and music in your cultural halls virtuous, lovely, praiseworthy, and of good report (Articles of Faith 13), or do they represent a modern Sodom with short skirts, loud beat, strobe lights, and darkness? — Ezra Taft Benson

She cannot escape marriage; it is her sacred Hindu duty, just as giving her away in marriage was her father's sacred Hindu duty. Like Indian Independence, marriage is her ultimate 'Tryst with Destiny,' and it is not in her hand to escape her preordained and compulsory fate. A marriageable daughter is the lowest common denominator in the giant scheme of things. — Chandana Roy

I'm an anarchist. I'm implacably opposed to heirarchical systems of power and control. I also mistrust crowds, as they often operate according to their lowest common denominator. In terms of evolutionary psychology, the crowd is very close to a herd of stampeding wildebeest. — Will Self

Each person has the potential to be good and productive, yet I also know that many people never begin to tap their true potential. It is human nature to surrender to the lowest common denominator. We must purposely strive to move ahead and achieve. — John Patrick Hickey

No matter how comfortable I felt at SymboGen, I needed to remember how good they were at taking things and reducing them to their lowest common denominator. — Mira Grant

I admit at the beginning that 'popular religion,' 'demotic religion,' the pieties of the common folk, tends to sink to the lowest common denominator, be it in syncretizing saints with old, half-forgotten pagan godlings, or in preferring the nasal whine and the revivalist shoutin' to solid sense and learning, regarding intellect as positively inimical to the workings of the Holy Ghost. But it is in American religious life, especially Protestant American religious life, that things bottom out completely. — Markham Shaw Pyle

Email has the virtue - sounds like a bad thing, but it's the virtue of being the lowest common denominator messaging protocol. Everyone can have it. It can cross organizational boundaries. No one owns it. It's not some particular company's platform. — Stewart Butterfield

We have to take risks in British television. It has to stop playing to the lowest common denominator and patronising people. — Charles Dance

Inside a company, you can mandate that everyone use the same technology, which means you can go a little bit, I don't know, higher fidelity than the lowest common denominator technology. — Stewart Butterfield

Personally, I am far from convinced that the British system is suited to India. The parliamentary democracy we have adopted involves the British perversity of electing a legislature to form an executive: this has created a unique breed of legislator, largely unqualified to legislate, who has sought election only in order to wield (or influence) executive power. It has produced governments obliged to focus more on politics than on policy or performance. It has distorted the voting preferences of an electorate that knows which individuals it wants but not necessarily which policies. It has spawned parties that are shifting alliances of individual interests rather than the vehicles of coherent sets of ideas. It has forced governments to concentrate less on governing than on staying in office, and obliged them to cater to the lowest common denominator of their coalitions. It is time for a change. Pluralist — Shashi Tharoor

You have a poem called "Bad Theology." What would you call a bad theology?
I guess any theology that presumes to have God in its pocket. Can I explain this without sinning further? We'll find out. The community in which I was raised did what they would call theology, but it was always a kind of cranky, brutal reduction of lush and beautiful complexities into the lowest common denominator, the dullest version. But when I went away to school and started reading more, I became increasingly dissatisfied with any theology that replaces the enormous, immeasurable real with very measurable and very calculated replacements. I'm not saying this very eloquently, but I guess bad theology articulates as definitive and conclusive that which is unknowable and without end. — Tony Leuzzi

I always go to the lowest common denominator for that ingredient. So if I think squash, I try to think what it means to me
and if it doesn't mean anything to me, I'm not gonna do well when I cook it. So [squash] means to me: fall, maple syrup, cinnamon, and things just come into your head so you can narrow the vortex and make it a bit smaller and you go with something because there's no time. — Geoffrey Zakarian

For decades, we've worked under the assumption that mass culture follows a steadily declining path toward lowest-common-denominator standards, presumably because the 'masses' want dumb, simple pleasures and big media companies want to give the masses what they want. — Steven Johnson

If more people would try and reach up instead of going to the lowest common denominator, I think we'd be a lot better off. — Mary Badham

I think that, regardless of our culture, age, or even personal handicaps, we can still strive for something exceptional. Why not expand our sights instead of restricting our lives and accepting the lowest common denominator of a dormant existence? Faith ... will permit us to take a chance on a new path, perhaps different from the one we now follow. It may be surprising where it leads. — Jimmy Carter

Often our students see nothing about religious faith except the lowest common denominator. They see nothing but TV evangelists and fools, and it doesn't occur to them that intelligent people might find this religious business worth living their lives by. — Doris Betts

If we must withhold all ribbing in the name of protecting everyone's feelings, then we truly are a toothless society. We will reach what I call the lowest common denominator of butthurt. — George Takei

Gangsta rap often reaches higher than its ugliest, lowest common denominator, misogyny, violence, materialism and sexual transgression are not its exclusive domain. At its best, this music draws attention to complex dimensions of ghetto life ignored by most Americans. Indeed, gangsta rap's in-your-face style may do more to force America to confront crucial social problems than a million sermons or political speeches. — Michael Eric Dyson

More than ambition, more than ability, it is rules that limit contribution; rules are the lowest common denominator of human behavior. They are a substitute for rational thought. — Hyman G. Rickover

Because he thinks Facebook is the lowest common denominator of social discourse. Though he does like to talk about social media as a vehicle for constructing and performing identity. Whatever the hell that means. — Becky Albertalli

Now, the big box office successes are superhero stories. It seems there's a lowest common denominator mentality, in terms of movies that are almost purely visual, that anyone can understand anywhere in the world. Good robot, bad robot: they fight. You don't need to know anything apart from that. And then we can make toys that look like that robot - and sell those toys or video games. — Terence Winter

Most of us, however committed we are to our ideals, will find ourselves every now and again reading an attention-grabbing headline from the Daily Mail or some other lowest-common denominator. That's not the same thing as frequenting a site like the white supremacist Stormfront. — Mallory Ortberg

We -- the industrialized, technologized world -- have never been richer. And yet to an extraordinary extent we in the West continue to inhabit a moral and cultural universe shaped by the hedonistic imperatives and radical ideals of the Sixties. Culturally, morally the world we inhabit is increasingly a trash world: addicted to sensation, besieged everywhere by the cacophonous, mind-numbing din of rock music, saturated with pornography, in thrall to the lowest common denominator wherever questions of taste, manners or intellectual delicacy are concerned. Marwick was right: 'The cultural revolution, in short, had continuous, uninterrupted, and lasting consequences'. — Roger Kimball

I respect the audience's intelligence a lot, and that's why I don't try to go for the lowest common denominator. — Spike Lee

In organizations where nothing much happens regardless of whether you do something exceptional or just show up in the morning, the best people lose heart and motivation is reduced near the lowest common denominator. — Judith M Bardwick

The best places to live, work, and visit are those places that are willing to uphold their standards in the face of pressure to allow lowest common denominator development ... Successful communities understand that when they say no to development that is contrary to the long-term health of their community, they will almost always get better development in its place. — Ed McMahon

The safest way to success is to write according to the capacity of the stupidest member of the audience. — Natasha Pulley

Here were the same long cold bare corridors, the same lowest common denominator of design and decoration, with every light source designed so as to irritate as few people as possible and to please just as few. — Isaac Asimov

The British media is sinking down, as the American news media has lowered the bar for all of humanity. British news media is definitely trying to stoop down to that level. Everyone is stooping to the lowest common denominator. — John Oliver