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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

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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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Vagrant
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More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin

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The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration. From the cautious quest for what they knew (or thought they knew) was out there, into an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. These are two substantially different kinds of human enterprise.
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. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.
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Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them.
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When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.
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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 most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory.
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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
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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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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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Throught human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery
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Standing, standing, standing - why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.
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Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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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
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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.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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I write to discover what I think.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
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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.
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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.
Daniel J. Boorstin