Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

Reality has come to seem more and more like what we are shown by cameras.

Nothing is really real unless it “happens” on television…Television has brought an inversion of our consciousness. When we take our eyes off the tube, we see things that are not quite authentic – or rather, which gain authenticity only by their resemblance to how things happen on television

If it doesn’t happen on television, it doesn’t happen.

What you see on TV is what you believe you can be.

Much of reality TV has been like the worst nightmares of Theodor Adorno and Jean Baudrillard come true, its seductive allure turning us into gossips in the global village.

Television and movies have short-circuited reality. I don't think a lot of people are entirely clear on what is real and what is on the screen.

I think that reality TV is so bad. It is a tool by the media to not make people think.

I know that if I had a television in my flat I would convince myself that everything on it was really interesting. I would say, 'I'm a Celebrity - Get Me Out of Here!' is so sociologically fascinating that I think I'd better watch.

People's attitude seems to be that if you don't have a television, you're not connected to reality - somehow you're not in reality. It's quite interesting, because I suspect that possibly it's the reverse.

I think there ought to be some serious discussion by smart people, really smart people, about whether or not proliferation of things like The Smoking Gun and TMZ and YouTube and the whole celebrity culture is healthy.

Supermarket tabloids and celebrity gossip shows are not just innocently shallow entertainment, but a fundamental part of a much larger movement that involves apathy, greed and hierarchy.

Just look at the messages today's media are sending everybody, from TV and commercials to actors and singers. Kids are just drowning in that 24-7 and it's getting really bad.

The entertainment industry has an effect on social consciousness.

Television brings with it two dangerous hazards: the worship of celebrity and the blurring of reality and fantasy.

I'm very intrigued that in this culture of reality television and celebrity - which is an enormous industry and generates billions and billions of dollars - we're so resourceful.

Images are made palpable, ironed flat by technology and, in turn, dictate the seemingly real through the representative.

People have become so literal because they're used to reality-based television.

People living their lives for you on TV; They say they're better than you, and you agree.

It's in the films and songs and all your magazines. It's everywhere that you may go, the devil's radio.

What we call reality is in fact nothing more than a culturally sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination.

Popular culture is the new Babylon, into which so much art and intellect now flow. It is our imperial sex theater, supreme temple of the western eye. We live in the age of idols. The pagan past, never dead, flames again in our mystic hierarchies of stardom.

Television is not the truth. Television is a goddamned amusement park.

The artificial world that we create through images will essentially become real.

There are certain people in our popular culture that just capture people's imaginations. And in death, they become even larger. Now, I have to admit that it's also fed by a 24/7 media that is insatiable.

Mass communication communicates massively: its language lacks precise articulation and avoids demanding terms; it argues for the kind of behavior in life which will make a "good program": ethic equals showbiz.