Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

Our knowledge is a little island in a great ocean of nonknowledge.

Indeed, the most important product of knowledge is ignorance.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the seashore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

Learn from me, if not by my precepts, then by my example, how dangerous is the pursuit of knowledge and how much happier is that man who believes his native town to be the world than he who aspires to be greater than his nature will allow.

What we know is a drop, what we don't know is an ocean.

The great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

The great obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance, but the illusion of knowledge.

I know not how I seem to others, but to myself I am but a small child wandering upon the vast shores of knowledge, every now and then finding a small bright pebble to content myself with while the vast ocean of undiscovered truth lay before me.

I do not know what I may appear to the world, but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy playing on the sea‑shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.

At the simplest level, only people who know they do not know everything will be curious enough to find things out.

It is not so bad being ignorant if you are totally ignorant; the hard thing is knowing in some detail the reality of ignorance.

Does the pursuit of truth give you as much pleasure as before? Surely it is not the knowing but the learning, not the possessing but the acquiring, not the being-there but the getting there that afford the greatest satisfaction. If I have exhausted something, I leave it in order to go again into the dark. Thus is that insatiable man so strange: when he has completed a structure it is not in order to dwell in it comfortably, but to start another.

One must explore deep and believe the incredible to find the new particles of truth floating in an ocean of insignificance.

Sometimes, we just don't know enough about what we are trying to achieve.

All that we do is touched with ocean, and yet we remain on the shore of what we know

Uncertainty is the prerequisite to gaining knowledge and frequently the result as well.

Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good that if you don’t know, know that you don’t know — the belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind, where, without knowing, you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally, the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.

Seeing is believing and believing is knowing and knowing beats unknowing and the unknown.

You think you know someone. But mostly you just know what you want to know.

Even as a youngster, though, I could not bring myself to believe that if knowledge presented danger, the solution was ignorance.

We travel because we do not know. We know that we do not know the best before we start. That is why we start. But we forget that we do not know the worst either. That is why we come back.

To know a little of anything gives neither satisfaction nor credit, but often brings disgrace or ridicule.

If my false figures came near to the facts, this happened merely by chance ... These comments are not worth printing. Yet it gives me pleasure to remember how many detours I had to make, along how many walls I had to grope in the darkness of my ignorance until I found the door which lets in the light of the truth ... In such manner did I dream of the truth.

To myself I am only a child playing on the beach, while vast oceans of truth lie undiscovered before me