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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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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.
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We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
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I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
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The traveler used to go about the world to encounter the natives. A function of travel agencies now is to prevent this encounter.
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A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
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The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
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American civilization, from its beginnings, had combined a dogmatic confidence in the future with a naive puzzlement over what the future might bring.
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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As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
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The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.
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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
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We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires.
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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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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
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The Christian test was a willingness to believe in the one Jesus Christ and His Message of salvation. What was demanded was not criticism but credulity. The Church Fathers observed that in the realm of thought only heresy had a history.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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Being known primarily for their well-knownness, celebrities intensify their celebrity images simply by becoming widely known for relations among themselves. By a kind of symbiosis, celebrities live off one another.
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.
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Formerly, a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary, to keep him properly in the public eye.
Daniel J. Boorstin