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

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.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

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

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.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

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.
- Daniel J. Boorstin

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.
- Daniel J. Boorstin