Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes - Page 5

Quotes about:

• The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Literature, Advertising, Century

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  7 Copy quote

• Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Land, Form, Jew

  15 Copy quote

• Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Stars, Book, Reading

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

  4 Copy quote

• destruction is easy for humans but creation is too difficult.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Easy, Creation, Destruction

  7 Copy quote

• Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Land, America, Perfection

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

  6 Copy quote

• If our knowledge is, as I believe, only an island in an infinite sea of ignorance, how can we in our short lifetime find satisfaction in exploring our little island? How can we persuade ourselves to be exhilarated by our meager knowledge and yet not be discouraged by the ocean vistas?

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Short Life, Believe, Ocean

  6 Copy quote

• . . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Mean, May, Messiness

  4 Copy quote

• The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity . . . may become a star!

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Stars, Men, Jean Jacques Rousseau

  4 Copy quote

• Our American past always speaks to us with two voices: the voice of the past, and the voice of the present. We are always asking two quite different questions. Historians reading the words of John Winthrop usually ask, What did they mean to him? Citizens ask, What do they mean to us? Historians are trained to seek the original meaning; all of us want to know the present meaning.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Wisdom, Reading, Creativity

  4 Copy quote

• Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined - even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness - to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  America, Selfishness, Spirit

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1993). “The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson”, p.229, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

• It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Exaggeration Is, World, Steps

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

  8 Copy quote

• The mind is a vagrant thing ... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time.
  Answering criticism that the book for which he won a Pulitzer Prize was written in the years he had been employed at the Smithsonian. He specified that did not write on the premises there, but only at home outside of working hours.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Book, Home, Writing

  5 Copy quote

• In fast-moving, progress-conscious America, the consumer expects to be dizzied by progress. If he could completely understand advertising jargon he would be badly disappointed. The half-intelligibility which we expect, or even hope, to find in the latest product language personally reassures each of us that progress is being made: that the pace exceeds our ability to follow.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Moving, America, Progress

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

  7 Copy quote

• In the small town each citizen had done something in his own way to build the community. The town booster had a vision of the future which he tried to fulfill. The suburb dweller by contrast started with the future

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Visions Of The Future, Community, Citizens

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2010). “The Americans: The Democratic Experience”, p.427, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• [The Library of Congress] is a multimedia encyclopedia. These are the tentacles of a nation.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Science, Library, Multimedia

  8 Copy quote

• The variety of minds served the economy of nature in many ways. The Creator, who designed the human brain for activity, had insured the restlessness of all minds by enabling no single one to envisage all the qualities of the creation. Since no one by himself could aspire to a serene knowledge of the whole truth, all men had been drawn into an active, exploratory and cooperative attitude.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Attitude, Men, Brain

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1993). “The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson”, p.125, University of Chicago Press

  4 Copy quote

• [The Library of Congress] is a multimedia encyclopedia. These are the tentacles of a nation.
  [Referring to the diverse holdings of the library, including motion pictures, photographs, recordings, posters and other historic objects which collectively far outnumber the books]

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Book, Science, Library

  9 Copy quote

• But rather that we should lose our sense that neither can become the other, that the traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lense and the Cinerama screen tend to narrow it.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Lenses, Cinema, Form

  "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America".

  7 Copy quote

• Climaxing a movement for calendar reform which had been developing for at least a century, in 1582 Pope Gregory ordained that October 4 was to be followed by October 15.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Movement, October, Reform

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2011). “The Discoverers”, p.9, Vintage

  4 Copy quote

• Standing, standing, standing - why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Politics, Social, Characteristics

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

  4 Copy quote

• The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration. From the cautious quest for what they knew (or thought they knew) was out there, into an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. These are two substantially different kinds of human enterprise.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Discovery, Two, Different

  7 Copy quote

• The computer can help us find what we know is there. But the book remains our symbol and our resource for the unimagined question and the unwelcome answer.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Book, Answers, Helping

  4 Copy quote

• The institutional scene in which American man has developed has lacked that accumulation from intervening stages which has been so dominant a feature of the European landscape.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Men, Landscape, Scene

  "The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson" by Daniel J. Boorstin, University of Chicago Press, (p. 6), 1993.

  4 Copy quote

• Until now when we have started to talk about the uniqueness of America we have almost always ended by comparing ourselves to Europe. Toward her we have felt all the attraction and repulsions of Oedipus

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Country, Oedipus, Europe

  16 Copy quote

Page 5 of 5

First

← Prev

1

2

3

4

5

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin