“The American citizen thus lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare face our bewilderment, because our ambiguous experience is so pleasantly iridescent, and the solace of belief in contrived reality is so thoroughly real. We have become eager accessories to the great hoaxes of the age. These are the hoaxes we play on ourselves.”

—  Daniel J. Boorstin

Source: The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961), p. 37.

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Daniel J. Boorstin photo
Daniel J. Boorstin 39
American historian 1914–2004

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