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While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.

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
Knowledge
Cumulative
Miscellaneous
Orderly
Random
Information

More quotes by 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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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
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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
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The hero was distinguished by his achievement the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself the celebrity is created by the media. The hero was a big man the celebrity is a big name.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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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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A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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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While the easiest way in metaphysics is to condemn all metaphysics as nonsense, the easiest way in morals is to elevate the common practice of the community into a moral absolute.
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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The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
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