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Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

Daniel J. Boorstin

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Daniel J. Boorstin
Age: 89 †
Born: 1914
Born: October 1
Died: 2004
Died: February 28
Biographer
Historian
Lawyer
Librarian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Commands
Vivid
Command
Models
Moral
Human
Humans
Persuasive
Explicit

More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin

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Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.
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The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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Standing, standing, standing - why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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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
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The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story- a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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Jefferson refused to pin his hopes on the occasional success of honest and unambitious men on the contrary, the great danger was that philosophers would be lulled into complacence by the accidental rise of a Franklin or a Washington. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
Daniel J. Boorstin