Any government which made the welfare of men depend on the character of their governors was an illusion.
Daniel J. BoorstinThe American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly irridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.
Daniel J. BoorstinThrought human history, illusions of knowledge, not ignorance, have proven to be the principal obstacles to discovery
Daniel J. BoorstinThe courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.
Daniel J. BoorstinIt is only a short step from exaggerating what we can find in the world to exaggerating our power to remake the world.
Daniel J. BoorstinBeware of charisma . . . Representative Men; was Ralph Waldo Emerson's 1850 phrase for the great men in a democracy . . . Is there some common quality among these Representative Men who have been most successful as our leaders? I call it the need to be authentic-or, as our dictionaries tell us, conforming to fact and therefore worthy of trust, reliance or belief. While the charismatic has an uncanny outside source of strength, the authentic is strong because he is what he seems to be.
Daniel J. Boorstin