Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

I used to think 'King Lear' was an analysis of insanity, but I don't really think it is. When Lear is supposed to be at his most insane, he is actually understanding the world for the first time.

One thing I hope I'll never be is drunk with my own power. And anybody who says I am will never work in this town again.

Censors tend to do what only psychotics do: they confuse reality with illusion.

Part of the role of photography is to exaggerate, and that is an aspect that I have to puncture. I do that by showing the world as I really find it.

Reality is often measurably different from the perception projected through the media. But the speed of that projection, and thus of that perception and of the public’s response thereto, is such that policy must now be made in response not to the reality but to the perception. Thus the media have the power (consciously or not) to create a perception that can force a response which objectively becomes "reality" but which may have nothing to do with the original "real" reality. This contributes not only to the appearance of chaos but also to the making of crises.

Today we live in a society in which spurious realities are manufactured by the media, by governments, by big corporations, by religious groups, political groups...So I ask, in my writing, What is real? Because unceasingly we are bombarded with pseudo-realities manufactured by very sophisticated people using very sophisticated electronic mechanisms. I do not distrust their motives; I distrust their power. They have a lot of it. And it is an astonishing power: that of creating whole universes, universes of the mind. I ought to know. I do the same thing.

It's hubris to think that the way we see things is everything there is.

Fear does not have to be real to be powerful.

The mind was dreaming. The world was its dream.

The world being illusive, one must be deluded in some way if one is to triumph in it.

To photograph is to appropriate the thing photographed. It means putting oneself into a certain relation to the world that feels like knowledge-and therefore, like power.

The world doesn't make sense until you force it to.

For a sorcerer, reality, or the world as we all know it, is only a description.

We realized that the version of the world they rendered for us was not the version of the world they really believed in.

I grasp reality, but sometimes I like to choke it into submission.

Appearances are not reality; but they often can be a convincing alternative to it. You can control appearances most of the time, but facts are what they are. When the facts are too sharp, you can craft a cheerful version of the situation and cover the facts the way that you can covered a battered old four-slice toaster with a knitted cozy featuring images of kittens.

The truth is what I make it. I could set this world on fire and call it rain.

We can never be quite clear whether we are referring to the world as it is or to the world as we see it.

No doubt the world is entirely an imaginary world, but it is only once removed from the true world.

The world in your mind is as real as the world outside of it.

Those who are awake all live in the same world. Those who are asleep live in their own worlds.

In all the affairs of this world, so much reputation is in reality so much power.

The world is a lie...not you and me.

We live, after all, in a world where illusions are sacred and truth profane.