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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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Daniel J. Boorstin
Age: 89 †
Born: 1914
Born: October 1
Died: 2004
Died: February 28
Biographer
Historian
Lawyer
Librarian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Emptiness
Author
Biggest
Dignity
Seller
Atheism
Agnosticism
Best
Sellers
Made
Contain
World
Celebrity

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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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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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.
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I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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I write to discover what I think.
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 most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.
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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The problem for us is less to discover the way it really is than to see the meaning of the way.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.
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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The hero created himself the celebrity is created by the media.
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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There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, 'How dull is the world today!' Nowadays he says, 'What a dull newspaper!'
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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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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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