Quote

Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Daniel J. Boorstin
Age: 89 †
Born: 1914
Born: October 1
Died: 2004
Died: February 28
Biographer
Historian
Lawyer
Librarian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Never
Commodity
Contrary
Increase
Simply
Grows
Knowledge
Dispersion
Another
Diffusion
Used
Increases

More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin

Image
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
The most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
What is more natural in a democratic age than that we should begin to measure the stature of a work of art-especially of a painting-by how widely and how well it is reproduced?
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world. Expecting more novelty than there is, more greatness than there is, and more strangeness than there is, we imagine ourselves masters of a plastic universe. But a world we can shape to our will is a shapeless world.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
In the twentieth century our highest praise is to call the Bible 'The World's Best Seller.' And it has come to be more and more difficult to say whether we think it is a best seller because it is great, or vice versa.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
God is the celebrity author of the world's best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin