Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

• 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

  2511

• 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

  3817

• Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ourselves of all real models. We lose sight of the men and women who do not simply seem great because they are famous but are famous because they are great. We come closer and closer to degrading all fame into notoriety.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

  2576

• If our knowledge is, as I believe, only an island in an infinite sea of ignorance, how can we in our short lifetime find satisfaction in exploring our little island? How can we persuade ourselves to be exhilarated by our meager knowledge and yet not be discouraged by the ocean vistas?

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  3125

• 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

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4127

• Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  "Working Profile; Helping the Library of Congress Fulfill Its Mission" by Barbara Gamarekian, archive.nytimes.com. July 8, 1983.

  4086

• Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  "Biography/Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

  4649

• The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  The Image ch. 1 (1962)

  3163

• 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

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2010). “The Americans: The Democratic Experience”, p.427, Vintage

  1100

• When the necessary eleven days were added, George Washington’s birthday, which fell on February 11, 1731, Old Style, became February 22, 1732, New Style.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2011). “The Discoverers”, p.9, Vintage

  3921

• Formerly, a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary, to keep him properly in the public eye.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.61, Vintage

  434

• 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

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.91, Vintage

  3572

• 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

  "The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America".

  4999

• destruction is easy for humans but creation is too difficult.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  1320

• Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives- from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango - with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to-date scripts for actors on the tourists' stage.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  3232

• Our American past always speaks to us with two voices: the voice of the past, and the voice of the present. We are always asking two quite different questions. Historians reading the words of John Winthrop usually ask, What did they mean to him? Citizens ask, What do they mean to us? Historians are trained to seek the original meaning; all of us want to know the present meaning.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  2464

• In America, communities existed before governments. There were many groups of people with a common sense of purpose and a feeling of duty to one another before there were political institutions.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  1331

• The mind is a vagrant thing ... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time. Answering criticism that the book for which he won a Pulitzer Prize was written in the years he had been employed at the Smithsonian. He specified that did not write on the premises there, but only at home outside of working hours.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  3088

• The most refined skills of color printing, the intricate techniques of wide-angle photography, provide us pictures of trivia bigger and more real than life. We forget that we see trivia and notice only that the reproduction is so good. Man fulfils his dream and by photographic magic produces a precise image of the Grand Canyon. The result is not that he adores nature or beauty the more. Instead he adores his camera - and himself.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.170, Vintage

  4203

• The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  1981

• The hero was a big man; the celebrity is a big name.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.61, Vintage

  5046

• The variety of minds served the economy of nature in many ways. The Creator, who designed the human brain for activity, had insured the restlessness of all minds by enabling no single one to envisage all the qualities of the creation. Since no one by himself could aspire to a serene knowledge of the whole truth, all men had been drawn into an active, exploratory and cooperative attitude.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1993). “The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson”, p.125, University of Chicago Press

  841

• 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

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.7, Vintage

  3335

• The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.254, Vintage

  1579

• It is very unlikely that the computer will displace the books, except in areas where we need information speedily.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  3989

• Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  "Book of Humorous Quotations" by Connie Robertson, (p. 29), 1998.

  4237

• A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  Biography/Personal Quotes, www.imdb.com.

  4115

• 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

  2344

• 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

  Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

  522

• Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers.

  Daniel J. Boorstin

  2302

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