Quote

Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

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
Depends
Character
Government
Made
Men
Governors
Depend
Welfare
Illusion

More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin

Image
We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
The most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, 'How dull is the world today!' Nowadays he says, 'What a dull newspaper!'
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
I write to discover what I think.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
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
Image
Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
Dispersed as the Jews are, they still form one nation, foreign to the land they live in.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Image
It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.
Daniel J. Boorstin