DANIEL J. BOORSTIN

The world of crime is a last refuge of the authentic, uncorrupted, spontaneous event.

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

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

A sign of celebrity is that his name is often worth more than his services.

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.

The most important American addition to the World Experience was the simple surprising fact of America. We have helped prepare mankind for all its later surprises.

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

We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.

A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.

As you make your bed, so you must lie in it.

Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.

The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.

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

I've learned any fool can write a bad ad, but it takes a real genius to keep his hands off a good one.

A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.

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.'

I write to discover what I think. After all, the bars aren't open that early.

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

An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service.

Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.

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.

Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.

Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.

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

The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.