Daniel J. Boorstin

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

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

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.

Nothing is really real unless it happens on television.

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

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.

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.

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

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

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

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.'