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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
Open
Evening
Historians
Keep
Library
Libraries
People
Tiny
Refused
Notes
Historian
Defense
Note
Fail
Billion
Failing
Billions
Fraction
Spend
Total
Fractions
More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin
The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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.
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
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
Daniel J. Boorstin
A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
Daniel J. Boorstin
While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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?
Daniel J. Boorstin
The hero created himself the celebrity is created by the media.
Daniel J. Boorstin
There is no disinfectant like success.
Daniel J. Boorstin
More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.
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
The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all.
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
I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
Daniel J. Boorstin
But rather that we should lose our sense that neither can become the other, that the traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lense and the Cinerama screen tend to narrow it.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
