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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.

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
Keep
Library
Libraries
People
Tiny
Refused
Notes
Historian
Defense
Note
Fail
Billion
Failing
Billions
Fraction
Spend
Total
Fractions
Open
Evening
Historians

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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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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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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.
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We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in their place.
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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 fog of information can drive out knowledge.
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There is no disinfectant like success.
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The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
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. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.
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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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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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Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
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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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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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An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.
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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
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As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
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We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires.
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While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.
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History had been man's effort to accomodate himself to what he could not do. Amereican history in the 20th century would, more than ever before, test man's ability to accomodate himself to all the new things he could do.
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