Daniel J. Boorstin

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

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

"Americans expect to eat and stay thin, to be constantly on the move and ever more neighborly...to revere God and be God. "

"Formerly a public man needed a private secretary for a barrier between himself and the public. Nowadays he has a press secretary to keep him properly in the public eye. "

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

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

"More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowledge. "

"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. "

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

"The American experience stirred mankind from discovery to exploration, from the cautious quest for what they knew (or what they thought they knew) was out there, to an enthusiastic reaching to the unknown. "

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

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

"There is no disinfectant like success. "

"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' "