Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes - Page 5

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Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Real, Reality, Television

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

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In the twentieth century our highest praise is to call the Bible 'The World's Best Seller.' And it has come to be more and more difficult to say whether we think it is a best seller because it is great, or vice versa.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Bible, Thinking, Vices

Daniel J. Boorstin (1962). “The Image or What Happened to the American Dream”

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The most refined skills of color printing, the intricate techniques of wide-angle photography, provide us pictures of trivia bigger and more real than life. We forget that we see trivia and notice only that the reproduction is so good. Man fulfils his dream and by photographic magic produces a precise image of the Grand Canyon. The result is not that he adores nature or beauty the more. Instead he adores his camera - and himself.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Dream, Photography, Real

Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.170, Vintage

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

England, Found

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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?

Daniel J. Boorstin

Art, Age, Painting

Daniel J. Boorstin (2012). “The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America”, p.126, Vintage

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

Miracle, Deny, Refusal

Daniel J. Boorstin (1993). “The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson”, p.41, University of Chicago Press

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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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Stars, Book, Reading

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

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

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