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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
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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
Always
Toward
Europe
Oedipus
Started
Repulsion
Almost
Comparing
Talk
Uniqueness
Felt
Ended
America
Attraction
Country
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We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.
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I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
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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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Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
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We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires.
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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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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.
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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.
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The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
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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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An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.
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The computer can help us find what we know is there. But the book remains our symbol and our resource for the unimagined question and the unwelcome answer.
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The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.
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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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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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The mind is a vagrant thing.... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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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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