ThursdayMay 21, 2026
Quotes: 53419 Authors: 9969
Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 - February 28, 2004) was a prolific American historian, professor, attorney, and writer. He served as the U.S. Librarian of Congress from 1975 until 1987.
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.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance it is the illusion of knowledge.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge.
It is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world. Expecting more novelty than there is, more greatness than there is, and more strangeness than there is, we imagine ourselves masters of a plastic universe. But a world we can shape to our will is a shapeless world.
The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.
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.
We read advertisements to discover and enlarge our desires. We are always ready even eager - to discover, from the announcement of a new product, what we have all along wanted without really knowing it.
The great obstacle to discovery is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
I write to discover what I think.
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
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