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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.
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
Discover
Meaning
Less
Problem
Really
Way
More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin
We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Being known primarily for their well-knownness, celebrities intensify their celebrity images simply by becoming widely known for relations among themselves. By a kind of symbiosis, celebrities live off one another.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
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
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
An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.
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
Where ruts have not yet been worn, it requires less effort to stay out of them.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
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
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
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
Daniel J. Boorstin
I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
Daniel J. Boorstin
The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.
Daniel J. Boorstin
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
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
Throught human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery
Daniel J. Boorstin
Climaxing a movement for calendar reform which had been developing for at least a century, in 1582 Pope Gregory ordained that October 4 was to be followed by October 15.
Daniel J. Boorstin
Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.
Daniel J. Boorstin
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics and ideologues who menace decency and progress. No agnostic ever burned anyone at the stake or tortured a pagan, a heretic, or an unbeliever.
Daniel J. Boorstin
