Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes - Page 5

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Not so many years ago there was no simpler or more intelligible notion than that of going on a journey. Travel -movement through space -provided the universal metaphor for change. One of the subtle confusions -perhaps one of the secret terrors -of modern life is that we have lost this refuge. No longer do we move through space as we once did.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Life, Change, Travel

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destruction is easy for humans but creation is too difficult.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Easy, Creation, Destruction

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Of all the nations in the world, the United States was built in nobody's image. It was the land of the unexpected, of unbounded hope, of ideals, of quest for an unknown perfection. It is all the more unfitting that we should offer ourselves in images. And all the more fitting that the images which we make wittingly or unwittingly to sell America to the world should come back to haunt and curse us.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Land, America, Perfection

Daniel J. Boorstin (1978). “The Image”

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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

Short Life, Believe, Ocean

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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

Eye, Men, Publicity

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

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

Mean, May, Messiness

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Jeffersonian isolationism expressed an essentially cosmopolitan spirit. The Jeffersonian was determined - even at the expense of separating himself from the rest of the globe, and even though he be charged with provincial selfishness - to preserve America as an uncontaminated laboratory.

Daniel J. Boorstin

America, Selfishness, Spirit

Daniel J. Boorstin (1993). “The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson”, p.229, University of Chicago Press

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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

Wisdom, Reading, Creativity

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The star is the ultimate American verification of Jean-Jacques Rousseau's Emile. His mere existence proves the perfectability of any man or woman. Oh wonderful pliability of human nature, in a society where anyone can become a celebrity! And where any celebrity . . . may become a star!

Daniel J. Boorstin

Stars, Men, Jean Jacques Rousseau

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In fast-moving, progress-conscious America, the consumer expects to be dizzied by progress. If he could completely understand advertising jargon he would be badly disappointed. The half-intelligibility which we expect, or even hope, to find in the latest product language personally reassures each of us that progress is being made: that the pace exceeds our ability to follow.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Moving, America, Progress

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

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

Politics, Social, Characteristics

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

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[The Library of Congress] is a multimedia encyclopedia. These are the tentacles of a nation.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Science, Library, Multimedia

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The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration. From the cautious quest for what they knew (or thought they knew) was out there, into an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. These are two substantially different kinds of human enterprise.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Discovery, Two, Different

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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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Movement, October, Reform

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

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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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Exaggeration Is, World, Steps

Daniel J. Boorstin (1978). “The Image”

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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

Book, Home, Writing

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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

Visions Of The Future, Community, Citizens

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

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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

Attitude, Men, Brain

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

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[The Library of Congress] is a multimedia encyclopedia. These are the tentacles of a nation.
[Referring to the diverse holdings of the library, including motion pictures, photographs, recordings, posters and other historic objects which collectively far outnumber the books]

Daniel J. Boorstin

Book, Science, Library

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But rather that we should lose our sense that neither can become the other, that the traditional novel form continues to enlarge our experience in those very areas where the wide-angle lense and the Cinerama screen tend to narrow it.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Lenses, Cinema, Form

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

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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

Book, Answers, Helping

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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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Men, Landscape, Scene

"The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson" by Daniel J. Boorstin, University of Chicago Press, (p. 6), 1993.

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History had been man's effort to accomodate himself to what he could not do. Amereican history in the 20th century would, more than ever before, test man's ability to accomodate himself to all the new things he could do.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Men, History, Effort

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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

Country, Oedipus, Europe

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Born: October 1, 1914
Died: February 28, 2004
Occupation: Historian
Cite this Page: Citation

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