Occupation: Historian Birth: October 1, 1914 Death: February 28, 2004
Disagreement produces debate but dissent produces dissension..
I write to discover what I think..
The celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness..
I have observed that the world has suffered far less from ignorance than from pretensions to knowledge. It is not skeptics or explorers but fanatics ….
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge..
Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know..
The hero is known for achievements; the celebrity for well-knowns. The hero reveals the possibilities of human nature. The celebrity reveals the poss….
We suffer primarily not from our vices or our weaknesses, but from our illusions. We are haunted, not by reality, but by those images we have put in ….
Celebrity-worship and hero-worship should not be confused. Yet we confuse them every day, and by doing so we come dangerously close to depriving ours….
While knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous..
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be..
The American citizen lives in a world where fantasy is more real than reality, where the image has more dignity than its original. We hardly dare fac….
We must abandon the prevalent belief in the superior wisdom of the ignorant..
Our discontent begins by finding false villains whom we can accuse of deceiving us. Next we find false heroes whom we expect to liberate us. The hard….
The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge..
Historians will not fail to note that a people who could spend $300 billion on defense refused to spend a tiny fraction of that total to keep their l….
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge..
Time makes heroes but dissolves celebrities..
Planning for the future without a sense of history is like planting cut flowers..
The hero was distinguished by his achievement; the celebrity by his image or trademark. The hero created himself; the celebrity is created by the med….
By reading we discover our world, our history, and ourselves..