Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
Daniel J. Boorstin
Age: 89 †
Born: 1914
Born: October 1
Died: 2004
Died: February 28
Biographer
Historian
Lawyer
Librarian
Philosopher
Sociologist
Writer
Atlanta
Georgia
Hero
Heroes
Next
Begins
Emancipate
Find
False
Accuse
Must
Hardest
Liberate
Findings
Villains
Finding
Discontent
Discovery
Deceiving
Expect
Villain
More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin
. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.
Daniel J. Boorstin
An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The institutional scene in which American man has developed has lacked that accumulation from intervening stages which has been so dominant a feature of the European landscape.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
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
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
When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.
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
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 history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
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
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
Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
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
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
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