Daniel J. Boorstin Quotes

I think, in these days, especially in the States, you have to be a politician or an assassin or something, to really be a superstar.

I've got three friends that you'd call famous, but I'm sure after 20 years, most of my friends will be famous or work in television, because that's the nature of what your work is. When I was working in an office, most of my friends worked in offices.

You know, one of the biggest thrills I have is when famous people recognize me from Taxi.

The medium of response in America is fame; that's how a person that bounces a ball can make millions of dollars, and a school teacher with no fame makes $35,000.

Fame is not a natural condition for human beings.

You're not anyone in America unless you're on TV.

America has a genius for the encouragement of fame.

Fame is a good so wholly foreign to our natures that we have no faculty in the soul adapted to it, nor any organ in the body to relish it; an object of desire placed out of the possibility of fruition.

Sometimes I think people are famous because they're themselves and they do a role and you see them do it.

The professional celebrity, male and female, is the crowning result of the star system of a society that makes a fetish of competition. In America, this system is carried to the point where a man who can knock a small white ball into a series of holes in the ground with more efficiency than anyone else thereby gains social access to the President of the United States.

It isn't always simple when America discovers you at 11 years old. Suddenly, it's not just homework that you're responsible for. Your name becomes a hashtag, and if you're lucky, you might even get invited on 'Ellen.'

I looked at 'Us Weekly' and said, 'I want to be famous.'

Fame is weird and amorphous and unpredictable.

All I wanted to do was to become famous, but then I found out that it was nothing special.

If I wanted to be famous, I could have been famous before. I mean, I produced a Frank Sinatra special - Elizabeth Taylor, with Michael Jackson, Gregory Peck, I won't even take a picture.

Best-sellerism is the star system of the book world. A "best seller" is a celebrity among books. It is a book known primarily (sometimes exclusively) for its well-knownness.

Britney Spears told an interviewer if she weren't famous, she would be a teacher. So thank God she's famous.

Whether it happens over 10 years, like with a lot of people, or with one hit movie that thrusts you into that world, when you become successful as an actor, you become well known. In the end game, that's just part of the business.

Fame — the aggregate of all the misunderstandings that collect around a new name.

The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the possibilities of the press and media. Celebrities are people who make news, but heroes are people who make history. Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities.

When you're famous you kind of run into human nature in a raw kind of way. It stirs up envy, fame does.

Anyone could become a star, but everyone must be a human being.

You don't become a rock star for no reason.

Fame means absolutely nothing except a good table at a restaurant.

I never cease to be amazed why some of my friends became famous and others, just as talented, didn't. I've come to suspect it's a matter of wanting fame or not, and those who don't want it, don't get it.