Jefferson refused to pin his hopes on the occasional success of honest and unambitious men; on the contrary, the great danger was that philosophers would be lulled into complacence by the accidental rise of a Franklin or a Washington. Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.

Daniel J. Boorstin

Categorized in : Men Character Would Be

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

wisdom education inspiring

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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

confused real sports

Our attitude toward our own culture has recently been characterized by two qualities, braggadocio and petulance. Braggadocio - empty boasting of American power, American virtue, American know-how - has dominated our foreign relations now for some decades. Here at home - within the family, so to speak - our attitude to our culture expresses a superficially different spirit, the spirit of petulance. Never before, perhaps, has a culture been so fragmented into groups, each full of its own virtue, each annoyed and irritated at the others.

Daniel J. Boorstin

home attitude two

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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

media hero people

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

nerd opportunity mean

The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.

Daniel J. Boorstin

real age play

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

education teacher funny

The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

Daniel J. Boorstin

illusion progress ignorance

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.'

Daniel J. Boorstin

memorable adventure travel

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

courage cute life

I write to discover what I think.

Daniel J. Boorstin

writing thinking

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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

ignorance atheist humility

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

fun science knowledge

Beware of charisma . . . Representative Men; was Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1850 phrase for the great men in a democracy . . . Is there some common quality among these Representative Men who have been most successful as our leaders? I call it the need to be authentic-or, as our dictionaries tell us, conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance or belief. While the charismatic has an uncanny outside source of strength, the authentic is strong because he is what he seems to be.

Daniel J. Boorstin

strong successful men

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.

Daniel J. Boorstin

weakness suffering reality

As individuals and as a nation, we now suffer from social narcissism. The beloved Echo of our ancestors, the virgin America, has been abandoned. We have fallen in love with our own image, with images of our making, which turn out to be images of ourselves.

Daniel J. Boorstin

conceited love america

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

born-leaders greatness night

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

Daniel J. Boorstin

our-world reading world

In our world of big names, curiously, our true heroes tend to be anonymous. In this life of illusion and quasi-illusion, the person of solid virtues who can be admired for something more substantial than his well-knownness often proves to be the unsung hero: the teacher, the nurse, the mother, the honest cop, the hard worker at lonely, underpaid, unglamorous, unpublicized jobs.

Daniel J. Boorstin

lonely mother teacher

The problem for us is less to discover the way it really is than to see the meaning of the way.

Daniel J. Boorstin

problem way