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Daniel J. Boorstin

Daniel J. Boorstin Books

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The Discoverers

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“Like Hamlet, Goethe's Faust offers a wide panorama of scenes from the vulgar to the sublime, with passages of wondrous poetry that can be sensed even through the veil of translation. And it also preserves the iridescence of its modern theme. From it Oswald Spengler christened our Western culture 'Faustian,' and others too have found it an unexcelled metaphor for the infinitely aspiring always dissatisfied modern self. Goethe himself was wary of simple explanations. When his friends accused him of incompetence in metaphysics, he replied. 'I, being an artist, regard this as of little moment. Indeed, I prefer that the principle from which and through which I work should be hidden from me.”

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Book:The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination
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“Although we may suffer from idolatry, we do not, I think, suffer from materialism - from the overvaluing of material objects for their own sake. Of this the world accuses us. Yet our very wealth itself has somehow made us immune to materialism - the characteristic vice of impoverished peoples. Instead, our peculiar idolatry is one with which the world till now has been unfamiliar... To flood the world with images of ourselves. It is to these images and not the material objects that we are devoted. No wonder that the puzzled world finds this unattractive and calls it by the name of its own old-fashioned vices.”

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

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Book:The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
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“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.”

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Book:The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
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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.”

AmericaSpiritDeterminedSelfishnessPreservesExpensesGlobesLaboratorySeparatingIsolationism
Book:The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson
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“Creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer. The story of discoverers could be told in simple chronological order, since the latest science replaces what went before. But the arts are another story- a story of infinite addition. We must find order in the random flexings of the imagination.”

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Book:The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination
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“While the focus in the landscape of Old World cities was commonly government structures, churches, or the residences of rulers, the landscape and the skyline of American cities have boasted their hotels, department stores, office buildings, apartments, and skyscrapers. In this grandeur, Americans have expressed their Booster Pride, their hopes for visitors and new settlers, and customers, for thriving commerce and industry.”

WorldGovernmentChurchCitiesFocusBuildingPrideIndustryOfficeStructureCustomersStoresLandscapeDepartmentHotelRulersCommerceApartmentGrandeurVisitorsOld WorldSkyscraperResidenceSettlersAmerican CitiesDepartment StoresSkylinesOffice Buildings
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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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.”

KnowsWantMeanTwoDifferentWisdomAmericaPastReadingAsksSpeakVoiceKnowledgeCreativityHistoryCitizensAskingOriginalsQuittingHistorianMonarchy
Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“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.”

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Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.”

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Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.”

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Author:Daniel J. Boorstin
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“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.”

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