160 Quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin

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.

Throught human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery.

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.

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.’

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

There was a time when the reader of an unexciting newspaper would remark, ‘How dull is the world today!’ Nowadays he says, ‘What a dull newspaper!’

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

This sense of time, the awareness that countless others have come before and that others will follow in endless generations, distinguishes man from other animals. With this discovery of the meaning of death – that man’s own life is limited – the life of architecture begins. And so begins man the creator’s effort to conquer time.

God is the celebrity author of the world’s best seller. We have made god into the biggest celebrity of all, to contain our own emptiness.