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While Knowledge Is Orderly And Cumulative, Information Is Random And Miscellaneous.
-Daniel J. Boorstin
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While Knowledge Is Orderly

Daniel J. Boorstin
...
While Knowledge Is Orderly And Cumulative, Information Is Random And Miscellaneous.

Understanding the Quote: "while knowledge is orderly and cumulative, information is random and miscellaneous...."

This quote by Daniel J. Boorstin reflects deeply on the theme of knowledge. It connects to the universal human journey of purpose, motivation, and reflection. Often categorized under Knowledge, Information, Miscellaneous, the quote offers insight, emotional clarity, and intellectual inspiration to readers worldwide.

Whether you’re a student exploring new ideas, a leader trying to motivate your team, or someone seeking direction in life — this quote provides value. It resonates because it’s more than words — it’s a bridge between experience and wisdom. It shows how Daniel J. Boorstin interprets life's core challenges and triumphs.

Lessons From the Quote

This quote teaches resilience and focus. It reminds readers that no matter where they stand in life, reflection and self-awareness lead to growth. Each word has meaning, and when studied, it becomes clear how impactful thoughtful language can be.

About Daniel J. Boorstin

Daniel J. Boorstin is celebrated for insightful thoughts on knowledge and information. Their legacy lives on through writings that guide, comfort, and inspire. Discover more on their profile page.

Actionable Takeaways

  • Reflect on how this quote applies to your current life path.
  • Share the message with someone who needs inspiration.
  • Write your thoughts on this quote in a journal or blog post.
  • Use it as a daily affirmation or reminder.

Closing Thoughts

Quotes like this endure because they capture universal truths. They comfort us in solitude and empower us in groups. Carry this quote forward — live by its wisdom, share its message, and keep its essence alive.

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Knowledge
Information
Miscellaneous
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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 Their Place.
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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 Libraries Open In The Evening.
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History Had Been Man's Effort To Accomodate Himself To What He Could Not Do. Amereican History In The 20th Century Would, More Than Ever Before, Test Man's Ability To Accomodate Himself To All The New Things He Could Do.
Men
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As You Make Your Bed, So You Must Lie In It.
Lying
Bed
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Maps
Territory
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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 Hardest, Most Discomfiting Discovery Is That Each Of Us Must Emancipate Himself.
Hero
Discovery
Next
The Greatest Obstacle To Discovery Is Not Ignorance - It Is The Illusion Of Knowledge.
Inspiring
Education
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Being Known Primarily For Their Well-knownness, Celebrities Intensify Their Celebrity Images Simply By Becoming Widely Known For Relations Among Themselves. By A Kind Of Symbiosis, Celebrities Live Off One Another.
Idols
Symbiosis
Kind
Our Attitude Toward Our Own Culture Has Recently Been Characterized By Two Qualities, Braggadocio And Petulance. Braggadocio - Empty Boasting Of American Power, American Virtue, American Know-how - Has Dominated Our Foreign Relations Now For Some Decades. Here At Home - Within The Family, So To Speak - Our Attitude To Our Culture Expresses A Superficially Different Spirit, The Spirit Of Petulance. Never Before, Perhaps, Has A Culture Been So Fragmented Into Groups, Each Full Of Its Own Virtue, Each Annoyed And Irritated At The Others.
Attitude
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Two
Water, That Wonderful, Flowing Medium, The Luck Of The Planet - Which Would Serve Humankind In So Many Ways, And Which Would Give Our Planet A Special Character.
Character
Giving
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Climaxing A Movement For Calendar Reform Which Had Been Developing For At Least A Century, In 1582 Pope Gregory Ordained That October 4 Was To Be Followed By October 15.
Movement
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There Was A Time When The Reader Of An Unexciting Newspaper Would Remark, 'how Dull Is The World Today!' Nowadays He Says, 'what A Dull Newspaper!'
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World
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Americans Expect To Eat And Stay Thin, To Be Constantly On The Move And Ever More Neighborly ... To Revere God And Be God.
Moving
Disagreement Produces Debate But Dissent Produces Dissension. Dissent (which Come From The Latin, Dis And Sentire) Means Originally To Feel Apart From Others. People Who Disagree Have An Argument, But People Who Dissent Have A Quarrel. People May Disagree And Both May Count Themselves In The Majority. But A Person Who Dissents Is By Definition In A Minority. A Liberal Society Thrives On Disagreement But Is Killed By Dissension. Disagreement Is The Life Blood Of Democracy, Dissension Is Its Cancer.
Cancer
Latin
Mean
Disagreement Produces Debate But Dissent Produces Dissension.
Debate
Produce
Dissent
The Improved American Highway System Isolated The American-in-transit. On His Speedway He Had No Contact With The Towns Which He By-passed. If He Stopped For Food Or Gas, He Was Served No Local Fare Or Local Fuel, But Had One Of Howard Johnson's Nationally Branded Ice Cream Flavors, And So Many Gallons Of Exxon. This Vast Ocean Of Superhighways Was Nearly As Free Of Culture As The Sea Traversed By The Mayflower Pilgrims.
Ocean
Ice Cream
Sea
While Knowledge Is Orderly And Cumulative, Information Is Random And Miscellaneous.
Knowledge
Information
Miscellaneous
Destruction Is Easy For Humans But Creation Is Too Difficult.
Easy
Creation
Destruction
In Fast-moving, Progress-conscious America, The Consumer Expects To Be Dizzied By Progress. If He Could Completely Understand Advertising Jargon He Would Be Badly Disappointed. The Half-intelligibility Which We Expect, Or Even Hope, To Find In The Latest Product Language Personally Reassures Each Of Us That Progress Is Being Made: That The Pace Exceeds Our Ability To Follow.
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No Agnostic Ever Burned Anyone At The Stake Or Tortured A Pagan, A Heretic, Or An Unbeliever.
Atheist
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Human Models Are More Vivid And More Persuasive Than Explicit Moral Commands.
Vivid
Moral
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The Great Obstacle To Discovering The Shape Of The Earth, The Continents, And The Oceans Was Not Ignorance, But The Illusion Of Knowledge.
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Sheep
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Way
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Jefferson Refused To Pin His Hopes On The Occasional Success Of Honest And Unambitious Men; On The Contrary, The Great Danger Was That Philosophers Would Be Lulled Into Complacence By The Accidental Rise Of A Franklin Or A Washington. Any Government Which Made The Welfare Of Men Depend On The Character Of Their Governors Was An Illusion.
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Never Have People Been More The Masters Of Their Environment. Yet Never Has A People Felt More Deceived And Disappointed. For Never Has A People Expected So Much More Than The World Could Offer.
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The Star Is The Ultimate American Verification Of Jean-jacques Rousseau's Emile. His Mere Existence Proves The Perfectability Of Any Man Or Woman. Oh Wonderful Pliability Of Human Nature, In A Society Where Anyone Can Become A Celebrity! And Where Any Celebrity . . . May Become A Star!
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Since The Creator Had Made The Facts Of The After-life Inaccessible To Man, He Must Not Have Required That Man Understand Death In Order To Live Fruitfully.
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We Read Advertisements... To Discover And Enlarge Our Desires. We Are Always Ready - Even Eager - To Discover, From The Announcement Of A New Product, What We Have All Along Wanted Without Really Knowing It.
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Dispersed As The Jews Are, They Still Form One Nation, Foreign To The Land They Live In.
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It Is Only A Short Step From Exaggerating What We Can Find In The World To Exaggerating Our Power To Remake The World.
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What Is More Natural In A Democratic Age Than That We Should Begin To Measure The Stature Of A Work Of Art-especially Of A Painting-by How Widely And How Well It Is Reproduced?
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The Most Important American Addition To The World Experience Was The Simple Surprising Fact Of America. We Have Helped Prepare Mankind For All Its Later Surprises.
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The Computer Can Help Us Find What We Know Is There. But The Book Remains Our Symbol And Our Resource For The Unimagined Question And The Unwelcome Answer.
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In America, Communities Existed Before Governments. There Were Many Groups Of People With A Common Sense Of Purpose And A Feeling Of Duty To One Another Before There Were Political Institutions.
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The Traveler Was Active; He Went Strenuously In Search Of People, Of Adventure, Of Experience. The Tourist Is Passive; He Expects Interesting Things To Happen To Him. He Goes 'sight-seeing.'
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The Fog Of Information Can Drive Out Knowledge.
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Fog
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Photography
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Travel
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The Variety Of Minds Served The Economy Of Nature In Many Ways. The Creator, Who Designed The Human Brain For Activity, Had Insured The Restlessness Of All Minds By Enabling No Single One To Envisage All The Qualities Of The Creation. Since No One By Himself Could Aspire To A Serene Knowledge Of The Whole Truth, All Men Had Been Drawn Into An Active, Exploratory And Cooperative Attitude.
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The Traveler Used To Go About The World To Encounter The Natives. A Function Of Travel Agencies Now Is To Prevent This Encounter.
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America Has Been A Land Of Dreams. A Land Where The Aspirations Of People From Countries Cluttered With Rich, Cumbersome, Aristocratic, Ideological Pasts Can Reach For What Once Seemed Unattainable. Here They Have Tried To Make Dreams Come True. Yet Now... We Are Threatened By A New And Particularly American Menace. It Is Not The Menace Of Class War, Of Ideology, Of Poverty, Of Disease, Of Illiteracy, Or Demagoguery, Or Of Tyranny, Though These Now Plague Most Of The World. It Is The Menace Of Unreality.
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February
Eleven
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Two
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Reading Is Like The Sex Act - Done Privately, And Often In Bed.
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There Is No Known Device For Artistic Contraception.
Artistic
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[the Library Of Congress] Is A Multimedia Encyclopedia. These Are The Tentacles Of A Nation. [referring To The Diverse Holdings Of The Library, Including Motion Pictures, Photographs, Recordings, Posters And Other Historic Objects Which Collectively Far Outnumber The Books]
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Might
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Landscape
Scene
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Men
The Most Important Lesson Of American History Is The Promise Of The Unexpected. None Of Our Ancestors Would Have Imagined Settling Way Over Here On This Unknown Continent. So We Must Continue To Have Society That Is Hospitable To The Unexpected, Which Allows Possibilities To Develop Beyond Our Own Imaginings.
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Important
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There's Something Beautifully Soothing About A Fact — Even (or Perhaps Especially) If We're Not Sure What It Means.
Mean
Reality
Facts
The Christian Test Was A Willingness To Believe In The One Jesus Christ And His Message Of Salvation. What Was Demanded Was Not Criticism But Credulity. The Church Fathers Observed That In The Realm Of Thought Only Heresy Had A History.
Christian
Jesus
Father
Standing, Standing, Standing - Why Do I Have To Stand All The Time? That Is The Main Characteristic Of Social Washington.
Politics
Social
Characteristics
[the Library Of Congress] Is A Multimedia Encyclopedia. These Are The Tentacles Of A Nation.
Science
Library
Multimedia
There Is No Disinfectant Like Success.
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Night
Greatness
Born Leaders
The Hero Created Himself; The Celebrity Is Created By The Media.
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Media
But Rather That We Should Lose Our Sense That Neither Can Become The Other, That The Traditional Novel Form Continues To Enlarge Our Experience In Those Very Areas Where The Wide-angle Lense And The Cinerama Screen Tend To Narrow It.
Lenses
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Form
By Reading We Discover Our World, Our History, And Ourselves.
Reading
Our World
World
Until Now When We Have Started To Talk About The Uniqueness Of America We Have Almost Always Ended By Comparing Ourselves To Europe. Toward Her We Have Felt All The Attraction And Repulsions Of Oedipus
Country
Oedipus
Europe
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America
Selfishness
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It Is Only A Short Step From Exaggerating What We Can Find In The World To Exaggerating Our Power To Remake The World. Expecting More Novelty Than There Is, More Greatness Than There Is, And More Strangeness Than There Is, We Imagine Ourselves Masters Of A Plastic Universe. But A World We Can Shape To Our Will Is A Shapeless World.
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Exaggeration Is
Imagination
A Best-seller Was A Book Which Somehow Sold Well Because It Was Selling Well.
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Selling
Wells
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Thinking
Bars
If Our Knowledge Is, As I Believe, Only An Island In An Infinite Sea Of Ignorance, How Can We In Our Short Lifetime Find Satisfaction In Exploring Our Little Island? How Can We Persuade Ourselves To Be Exhilarated By Our Meager Knowledge And Yet Not Be Discouraged By The Ocean Vistas?
Short Life
Believe
Ocean
Throught Human History, Illusions Of Knowledge, Not Ignorance, Have Proven To Be The Principal Obstacles To Discovery
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Discovery
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The Hero Was A Big Man; The Celebrity Is A Big Name.
Hero
Men
Names
The Mind Is A Vagrant Thing ... Thinking Is Not Analogous To A Person Working In A Laboratory Who Invents Something On Company Time. Answering Criticism That The Book For Which He Won A Pulitzer Prize Was Written In The Years He Had Been Employed At The Smithsonian. He Specified That Did Not Write On The Premises There, But Only At Home Outside Of Working Hours.
Book
Home
Writing
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 Ourselves Of All Real Models. We Lose Sight Of The Men And Women Who Do Not Simply Seem Great Because They Are Famous But Are Famous Because They Are Great. We Come Closer And Closer To Degrading All Fame Into Notoriety.
Sports
Confused
Real
More Appealing Than Knowledge Itself Is The Feeling Of Knowledge.
Knowledge
Feelings
What Preoccupies Us, Then, Is Not God As A Fact Of Nature, But As A Fabrication Useful For A God-fearing Society. God Himself Becomes Not A Power But An Image.
Nature
Atheism
Facts
Creators, Makers Of The New, Can Never Become Obsolete, For In The Arts There Is No Correct Answer. The Story Of Discoverers Could Be Told In Simple Chronological Order, Since The Latest Science Replaces What Went Before. But The Arts Are Another Story- A Story Of Infinite Addition. We Must Find Order In The Random Flexings Of The Imagination.
Art
Creativity
Simple
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 And Ideologues Who Menace Decency And Progress. No Agnostic Ever Burned Anyone At The Stake Or Tortured A Pagan, A Heretic, Or An Unbeliever.
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Ignorance
Humility
It Is Very Unlikely That The Computer Will Displace The Books, Except In Areas Where We Need Information Speedily.
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Needs
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Time
Hero
Idols
The Courage To Imagine The Otherwise Is Our Greatest Resource, Adding Color And Suspense To All Our Life.
Life
Cute
Courage
The Image Is Made To Order, Tailored To Us. An Ideal, On The Hand, Has A Claim On Us. It Does Not Serve Us, We Serve It. If We Have Trouble Striding Toward It, We Assume The Matter Is With Us, And Not The Ideal.
Hands
Order
Doe
Of All The Nations In The World, The United States Was Built In Nobody's Image. It Was The Land Of The Unexpected, Of Unbounded Hope, Of Ideals, Of Quest For An Unknown Perfection. It Is All The More Unfitting That We Should Offer Ourselves In Images. And All The More Fitting That The Images Which We Make Wittingly Or Unwittingly To Sell America To The World Should Come Back To Haunt And Curse Us.
Land
America
Perfection
Knowledge Is Not Simply Another Commodity. On The Contrary. Knowledge Is Never Used Up. It Increases By Diffusion And Grows By Dispersion.
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Commodity
Increase
Nothing Is Really Real Unless It Happens On Television.
Real
Reality
Television
When I Was Living In England I Found That The More I Lived Abroad, The More American I Discovered I Was.
England
Found
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 Face Our Bewilderment, Because Our Ambiguous Experience Is So Pleasantly Irridescent, 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.
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Play
Age
As Individuals And As A Nation, We Now Suffer From Social Narcissism. The Beloved Echo Of Our Ancestors, The Virgin America, Has Been Abandoned. We Have Fallen In Love With Our Own Image, With Images Of Our Making, Which Turn Out To Be Images Of Ourselves.
Love
Conceited
America
Formerly, A Public Man Needed A Private Secretary For A Barrier Between Himself And The Public. Nowadays He Has A Press Secretary, To Keep Him Properly In The Public Eye.
Eye
Men
Publicity
Freedom Means The Opportunity To Be What We Never Thought We Would Be.
Mean
Opportunity
Nerd
The Republic Of Technology Where We Will Be Living Is A Feedback World.
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Republic
The Force Of The Advertising Word And Image Dwarfs The Power Of Other Literature In The 20th Century.
Literature
Advertising
Century
Books Are Messengers Of Freedom. They Can Be Hidden Under A Mattress Or Smuggled Into Slave Nations.
Book
Messengers
Slave
While The Jeffersonian Did Not Flatly Deny The Creator's Power To Perform Miracles, He Admired His Refusal To Do So.
Miracle
Deny
Refusal
A Sign Of Celebrity Is That His Name Is Often Worth More Than His Services.
Names
Dignity
Fame
The History Of Western Science Confirms The Aphorism That The Great Menace To Progress Is Not Ignorance But The Illusion Of Knowledge.
Ignorance
Progress
Illusion
In The Small Town Each Citizen Had Done Something In His Own Way To Build The Community. The Town Booster Had A Vision Of The Future Which He Tried To Fulfill. The Suburb Dweller By Contrast Started With The Future
Visions Of The Future
Community
Citizens
Any Government Which Made The Welfare Of Men Depend On The Character Of Their Governors Was An Illusion.
Character
Men
Illusion
We Need Not Be Theologians To See That We Have Shifted Responsibility For Making The World Interesting From God To The Newspaperman.
God
Responsibility
Interesting
Where Ruts Have Not Yet Been Worn, It Requires Less Effort To Stay Out Of Them.
Worn It
Effort
Ruts
God Is The Celebrity Author Of The World's Best Seller. We Have Made God Into The Biggest Celebrity Of All, To Contain Our Own Emptiness.
Atheism
World
Emptiness
A Pseudo-event ... Comes About Because Someone Has Planned It, Planted, Or Incited It. Typically, It Is Not A Train Wreck Or An Earthquake, But An Interview.
Train Wrecks
Earthquakes
Events
Planning For The Future Without A Sense Of History Is Like Planting Cut Flowers.
Flower
Cutting
Planning
. . . The Messiness Of Experience, That May Be What We Mean By Life.
Mean
May
Messiness
A Wonderful Thing About A Book, In Contrast To A Computer Screen, Is That You Can Take It To Bed With You.
Book
Reading
Library
Each Living Art Object, Taken Out Of Its Native Habitat So We Can Conveniently Gaze At It, Is Like An Animal In A Zoo. Something About It Has Died In The Removal.
Art
Zoos
Taken
While The Focus In The Landscape Of Old World Cities Was Commonly Government Structures, Churches, Or The Residences Of Rulers, The Landscape And The Skyline Of American Cities Have Boasted Their Hotels, Department Stores, Office Buildings, Apartments, And Skyscrapers. In This Grandeur, Americans Have Expressed Their Booster Pride, Their Hopes For Visitors And New Settlers, And Customers, For Thriving Commerce And Industry.
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Government
Cities
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