Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

Quotes about:

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  The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Inspiring, Education, Wisdom

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  163 Copy quote

• Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Funny, Education, Teacher

  "A Case of Hypochondria". Newsweek, July 6, 1970.

  122 Copy quote

• We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Reality, Suffering, Weakness

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1978). “The Image”

  26 Copy quote

• I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Atheist, Ignorance, Humility

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  32 Copy quote

• Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Flower, Cutting, Planning

  15 Copy quote

• The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Knowledge, Technology, Fog

  "Working Profile; Helping the Library of Congress Fulfill Its Mission". Interview with Barbara Gamarekian, archive.nytimes.com. July 8, 1983.

  11 Copy quote

• The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Real, Play, Age

  "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America" by Daniel J. Boorstin, Vintage edition (p. 37), 1992.

  39 Copy quote

• I write to discover what I think.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Writing, Thinking

  Wall Street Journal, December 31, 1985.

  37 Copy quote

• Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Fun, Knowledge, Science

  "Working Profile; Helping the Library of Congress Fulfill Its Mission" by Barbara Gamarekian, archive.nytimes.com. July 8, 1983.

  28 Copy quote

• Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension. Dissent (which come from the Latin, dis and sentire) means originally to feel apart from others. People who disagree have an argument, but people who dissent have a quarrel. People may disagree and both may count themselves in the majority. But a person who dissents is by definition in a minority. A liberal society thrives on disagreement but is killed by dissension. Disagreement is the life blood of democracy, dissension is its cancer.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Cancer, Latin, Mean

  23 Copy quote

• Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hardest, most discomfiting discovery is that each of us must emancipate himself.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Hero, Discovery, Next

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.260, Vintage

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• The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Hero, Media, People

  28 Copy quote

• The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Life, Cute, Courage

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  43 Copy quote

• Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Night, Greatness, Born Leaders

  "Book of Humorous Quotations" by Connie Robertson, (p. 29), 1998.

  92 Copy quote

• Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Mean, Opportunity, Nerd

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  40 Copy quote

• By reading we discover our world, our history, and ourselves.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Reading, Our World, World

  19 Copy quote

• We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Learning, Intellectual, Ignorant

  "Daniel Boorstin" by Godfrey Hodgson, www.theguardian.com. March 1, 2004.

  7 Copy quote

• Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Sports, Confused, Real

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

  38 Copy quote

• The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Ignorance, Progress, Illusion

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2011). “Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected”, p.16, Vintage

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• Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio - empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how - has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. Here at home - within the family, so to speak - our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Attitude, Home, Two

  "The Columbia Dictionary of Quotations" by Robert Andrews, Columbia University Press, (p. 207), 1993.

  29 Copy quote

• A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Names, Dignity, Fame

  7 Copy quote

• As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Love, Conceited, America

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.257, Vintage

  28 Copy quote

• The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes 'sight-seeing.'

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Travel, Adventure, Memorable

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.85, Vintage

  57 Copy quote

• Probably no one of us has the True Religion. But all of us together - if we are allowed to be free - are discovering ways of conversing about the great mysteries. The pretense to know all the answers to the deepest mysteries is, of course, the grossest fraud. And any people who declare a Jihad, a holy war on unbelievers - those who do not share their believers' pretended omniscience - are enemies of thinking men and woman and of civilization. I see religion as only a way of asking unanswerable questions, of sharing the joy of a community of quest, and solacing one another in our ignorance.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  War, Ignorance, Men

  7 Copy quote

• Historians will not fail to note that a people who could spend $300 billion on defense refused to spend a tiny fraction of that total to keep their libraries open in the evening.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  People, Library, Tiny

  4 Copy quote

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