Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

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

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

“A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.”

“By reading we discover our world, our history, and ourselves.”

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

“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.
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“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.”

“I write to discover what I think.”

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

“Reading is like the sex act — done privately, and often in bed.”

“Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire good PR.”

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

“The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.”

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

“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.”

“There is no cure for illusions. There is only the opportunity for discovery.”

“There is no disinfectant like success.”

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

“When I was living in England I found that the more I lived abroad, the more American I discovered I was.”

“Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.”

“More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowing.”

“The most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory.”

“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.”

“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.”

“The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the media.”

“The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.”

“We have become so accustomed to our illusions that we mistake them for reality.”

“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.”