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Daniel J. Boorstin

Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

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Famous Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

“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.'”

PeopleHappensInterestingSeeingAdventureTravelSightActiveWanderAround The WorldMemorablePassiveTraveledTravelerFunny TravelCarpe DiemInteresting ThingsTouristsTrekkingGreat TravelInspiring TravelTravel AdventureAdventure And TravelLife Is An AdventurePhotography And TravelInspirational AdventureTravel AbroadTravel And TourismNext AdventureActive LifeTravellers FunnyTravel ExperienceSightseeingTravel And CultureJourneys And PathsExperiencing ThingsGoing On An AdventurePassive Voice
Book:The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
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“The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all.”

WorldLifeBelieveTwoRealRiskWeekModernEventsAdventureOffersTravelLifetimeFamiliarityTwo WeeksTouristsTourismStrangenessPseudo
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“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.”

KnowsTwoDifferentHomeSpiritCultureSpeakAttitudeQualityKnow HowVirtueGroupsEmptyRelationDecadesBoastAnnoyedIrritatedFragmentedForeign RelationsAmerican PowerTwo CulturesPetulance
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“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.”

MenShouldRealSeemsSportsLosesHe ManHeroFameWorshipModelsMen And WomenSightConfusedRole ModelsDegradingRutsNotorietyDeprivingHero Worship
Book:The Image or What Happened to the American Dream
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“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.”

WorldWellsPersonsHardBigsJobsMotherNamesVirtueTeacherHonestHumilityHard WorkHeroProveIllusionLonelyWorkersThis LifeOur WorldNurseHeroismCopHelpfulnessBeing A HeroHard WorkerTrue HeroUnderpaidUnsung Hero
Book:The Image or What Happened to the American Dream
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“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.”

WorldProgressAtheismHumilityIgnoranceAtheistPositive AtheismInsightfulStakesBurnedAgnosticDecencyFanaticsPaganSkepticThere Is No GodAgnosticismMenaceExplorersPretensionHereticUnbelieversIf There Is A GodThere Being No GodIdeologues
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.”

ThinkingWritingYearsMindPersonsBookHomeScienceHoursCompanyWrittenCriticismInventionPrizeEmployedLaboratoryPremisesVagrantsSmithsonian
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“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.”

MenNeedsHas BeensFactsSeemsBeliefStrongCommonQualityLeaderDemocracySuccessfulSourceWorthyPhrasesGreat MenRepresentativesConformRelianceDictionaryCharismaCharismaticUncannySource Of StrengthWaldo EmersonRalph Waldo
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.”

LifeYearsMovingLife IsLostChangeSpaceSecretJourneyModernMovementTravelYears AgoUniversalNotionMetaphorTerrorConfusionSubtleRefugeModern LifeTourism
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.”

IfsMadeWould BeAmericaMovingLanguageAbilityHalfProgressProductsConsciousAdvertisingConsumersDisappointedPaceConsumerismExceedOverconsumptionJargon
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“America has been a land of dreams. A land where the aspirations of people from countries cluttered with rich, cumbersome, aristocratic, ideological pasts can reach for what once seemed unattainable. Here they have tried to make dreams come true. Yet now... we are threatened by a new and particularly American menace. It is not the menace of class war, of ideology, of poverty, of disease, of illiteracy, or demagoguery, or of tyranny, though these now plague most of the world. It is the menace of unreality.”

PeopleWorldHas BeensWarCountryDreamAmericaPastClassPovertyRichLandDiseaseTyrannyIdeologyAspirationThreatenedDreams Come TruePlagueIdeologicalClutterMenaceUnattainableIlliteracyUnrealityDemagogueryAristocratic
Book: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.”

MenRealDreamForgetResultsMagicProduceColorSkillsPhotographyBiggerCamerasWideTechniqueGood ManPreciseAngleAdorePrintingRefinedReproductionIntricateCanyonsGrand CanyonTrivia
Book:The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America
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