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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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Daniel J. Boorstin
Age: 89 †
Born: 1914
Born: October 1
Died: 2004
Died: February 28
Biographer
Historian
Lawyer
Librarian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
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Agencies
World
Traveler
Encounter
Encounters
Prevent
Agency
Function
Travel
Natives
More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin
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
Jefferson refused to pin his hopes on the occasional success of honest and unambitious men on the contrary, the great danger was that philosophers would be lulled into complacence by the accidental rise of a Franklin or a Washington. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
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. 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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
American civilization, from its beginnings, had combined a dogmatic confidence in the future with a naive puzzlement over what the future might bring.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them.
Daniel J. Boorstin
We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
Daniel J. Boorstin
. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The problem for us is less to discover the way it really is than to see the meaning of the way.
Daniel J. Boorstin
I write to discover what I think.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
