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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.

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
World
Mankind
American
Surprises
Simple
Addition
Fact
Prepare
Experience
Surprising
Facts
Helped
America
Surprise
Important
Later

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Throught human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery
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. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.
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When the necessary eleven days were added, George Washington’s birthday, which fell on February 11, 1731, Old Style, became February 22, 1732, New Style.
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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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There is no disinfectant like success.
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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.
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Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in.
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Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them.
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The hero created himself the celebrity is created by the media.
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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.
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History had been man's effort to accomodate himself to what he could not do. Amereican history in the 20th century would, more than ever before, test man's ability to accomodate himself to all the new things he could do.
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I write to discover what I think.
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Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.
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Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.
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We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.
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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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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.
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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.
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Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.
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The problem for us is less to discover the way it really is than to see the meaning of the way.
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