Daniel J. Boorstin

Historian

1914-10-01

Quotes by 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.

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

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

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

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

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• We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.

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• 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.

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• 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.'

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• 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.

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• 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?

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

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• 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.

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• Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.

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• 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.

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• The great obstacle to discovery is not ignorance; it is the illusion of knowledge.

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• The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

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• It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.

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

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