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

“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

“PowerPoint presentations too often resemble a school play – very 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

“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)

“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”

Tags: Edward Tufte, Garr Reynolds, quotes, Seth Godin, The Office