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We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.

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
Intellectual
Learning
Wisdom
Prevalent
Belief
Superior
Must
Superiors
Abandon
Ignorant
Intelligence

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In the small town each citizen had done something in his own way to build the community. The town booster had a vision of the future which he tried to fulfill. The suburb dweller by contrast started with the future
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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.
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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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Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.
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A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
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Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.
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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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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.
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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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Standing, standing, standing - why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.
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Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them.
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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.
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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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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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American civilization, from its beginnings, had combined a dogmatic confidence in the future with a naive puzzlement over what the future might bring.
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I write to discover what I think.
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Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
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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.
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More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.
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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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