Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

Throught human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery

There is no known device for artistic contraception.

Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly ... to revere God and be God.

While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous.

The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his name or trademark.

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.

. . . the messiness of experience, that may be what we mean by life.

Standing, standing, standing - why do I have to stand all the time? That is the main characteristic of social Washington.

We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant.

The institutional scene in which American man has developed has lacked that accumulation from intervening stages which has been so dominant a feature of the European landscape.

Books are messengers of freedom. They can be hidden under a mattress or smuggled into slave nations.

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.

Water, that wonderful, flowing medium, the luck of the planet - which would serve humankind in so many ways, and which would give our planet a special character.

What is more natural in a democratic age than that we should begin to measure the stature of a work of art-especially of a painting-by how widely and how well it is reproduced?

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

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.

Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.

A pseudo-event ... comes about because someone has planned it, planted, or incited it. Typically, it is not a train wreck or an earthquake, but an interview.

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

The traveler used to go about the world to encounter the natives. A function of travel agencies now is to prevent this encounter.

Never have people been more the masters of their environment. Yet never has a people felt more deceived and disappointed. For never has a people expected so much more than the world could offer.

God is the celebrity author of the world's best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.

The mind is a vagrant thing.... Thinking is not analogous to a person working in a laboratory who invents something on company time.

While the Jeffersonian did not flatly deny the Creator's power to perform miracles, he admired His refusal to do so.

An enamored amateur need not be a genius to stay out of the ruts he has never been trained in.

American civilization, from its beginnings, had combined a dogmatic confidence in the future with a naive puzzlement over what the future might bring.

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.

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.

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

A sign of a celebrity is often that his name is worth more than his services.

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

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.

The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.