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Quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin


The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
– 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
As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.
– 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
I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
I've learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
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
Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Reading is like the sex act-done privately, and often in bed.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Standing, standing, standing - why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
The deeper problems connected with advertising come less from the unscrupulousness of our 'deceivers' than from our pleasure in being deceived, less from the desire to seduce than from the desire to be seduced.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
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
The most important lesson of American history is the promise of the unexpected. None of our ancestors would have imagined settling way over here on this unknown continent. So we must continue to have society that is hospitable to the unexpected, which allows possibilities to develop beyond our own imaginings.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
The traveler was active; he went strenuously in search of people, of adventure, of experience. The tourist is passive; he expects interesting things to happen to him. He goes sight-seeing.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.
– 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
We read advertisements... to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready - even eager - to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing 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 they built this building they were afraid to say that beauty is truth for fear that it wouldn't be by the time it was completed.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.
– Daniel J. Boorstin
A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
– Daniel J. Boorstin