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Throught human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery

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
History
Illusions
Human
Proven
Humans
Principal
Obstacles
Discovery
Illusion
Ignorance

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The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
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A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
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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.
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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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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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The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
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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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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?
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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!'
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Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hardest, most discomfiting discovery is that each of us must emancipate himself.
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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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While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.
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The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.
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Historians will not fail to note that a people who could spend $300 billion on defense refused to spend a tiny fraction of that total to keep their libraries open in the evening.
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The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.
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We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
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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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I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
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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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As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
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