The modern American tourist now fills his experience with pseudo-events. He has come to expect both more strangeness and more familiarity than the world naturally offers. He has come to believe that he can have a lifetime of adventure in two weeks and all the thrills of risking his life without any real risk at all.
Daniel J. BoorstinModern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives- from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the villagers of Chichacestenango - with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to-date scripts for actors on the tourists' stage.
Daniel J. BoorstinThe most promising words ever written on the maps of human knowledge are terra incognita, unknown territory.
Daniel J. BoorstinThere's something beautifully soothing about a fact — even (or perhaps especially) if we're not sure what it means.
Daniel J. BoorstinAmerican civilization, from its beginnings, had combined a dogmatic confidence in the future with a naive puzzlement over what the future might bring.
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