Mar 31 2009

A Humble Collection of PowerPoint Quotes

When I recently needed a few quotes mentioning PowerPoint, I wasn’t able to find many very easily. As a result, I thought I would share some of the interesting PowerPoint quotes I found from various presentation experts, academia, business, and TV/movies.

Over time I will be adding more quotes to this post. Please send me any good PowerPoint quotes that you have so I can add them to this collection.

Presentation Experts

Seth Godin

Seth Godin

Powerpoint could be the most powerful tool on your computer. But it’s not. Countless innovations fail because their champions use PowerPoint the way Microsoft wants them to, instead of the right way.”

Seth Godin, Marketing expert

“There is no question that PowerPoint has been at least a part of the problem because it has affected a generation. It should have come with a warning label and a good set of design instructions back in the ’90s. But it is also a copout to blame PowerPoint — it’s just software, not a method.

Garr Reynolds, Presentation expert

Academia

Edward Tufte

Edward Tufte

“PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school playvery loud, very slow, and very simple.

“If your words or images are not on point, making them dance in color won’t make them relevant.
“Power corrupts, PowerPoint corrupts absolutely.

Edward Tufte, Yale Emeritus professor

“PowerPoint is the Rodney Dangerfield of software. It gets no respect.”

Ken Goldberg, Berkeley Engineering professor

Business

“PowerPoint doesn’t kill meetings. People kill meetings. But using PowerPoint is like having a loaded AK-47 on the table: You can do very bad things with it.”

Peter Norvig, Google Director of Research

Jerry Maguire

Jerry Maguire

“The bottom line is that anyone who can click a mouse can have their innermost thoughts blown up to CinemaScope size and plastered across the conference room wall. With PowerPoint, we are all the Tom Cruise of our offices, only not as good looking and much more wacky.”

Bob Goldman, Business writer



Government

“PowerPoint makes us stupid.”

Gen. James N. Mattis, Marine Corps

TV/Movies (the Office)

PowerPoint is boring

Dwight Schrute

“Last week I gave a fire safety talk (clears throat) and nobody paid any attention. It’s my own fault for using PowerPoint. PowerPoint is boring. People learn in a lot of different ways, but experience is the best teacher (lights a cigarette). Today, smoking is gonna save lives (throws cigarette into garbage can filled with paper and lighter fluid).”

Dwight Schrute, The Office, Season 5 – Episode 13, “Stress Relief”

Michael: “We’ll ask Powerpoint.”
Oscar: “Michael, this is a presentation tool.”
Michael: “You’re a presentation tool…”

Michael Scott & Oscar Martinez, The Office, Season 4 – Episode 4, “Money”

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7 Responses to “A Humble Collection of PowerPoint Quotes”

  1. Tomas says:

    Here’s one that I found on Twitter by @themba:

    “OH: Powerpoint was the first gateway drug to multimedia in the classroom.”

    You can find the original Tweet here:

    http://twitter.com/themba/status/1033057235

    :)

  2. Tyler Burns says:

    When misused, PowerPoint becomes a drug: addicting, expensive, and made by bad people; too bad it doesn’t require a prescription.

  3. Powerpoint idézetek (angol) « drprezi says:

    […] Humble Collection of PowerPoint Quotes Category: For Fun — pptninja @ 6:29 am […]

  4. stacy says:

    THANK YOU FOR THIS! I used the office quote from the office! I love the office. Anyway you saved me tons of time!

  5. Moira says:

    Thanks… It helped a lot in my seminar workshop on how to used PowerPoint… Keep it up…

  6. Alan says:

    Not sure why you felt the need to add emphasis to the quotes…do they not stand on their own in their brevity?

  7. martym says:

    “Nelson Mandela doesn’t need a slide deck to be a good speaker”

    – Cory & Heather

Leave a Reply to Tomas