The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge.
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.
A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well simply because it was selling well.
More appealing than knowledge itself is the feeling of knowing.
A wonderful thing about a book, in contrast to a computer screen, is that you can take it to bed with you.
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.
A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
An image is not simply a trademark, a design, a slogan or an easily remembered picture. It is a studiously crafted personality profile of an individual, institution, corporation, product or service.
Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion.
The force of the advertising word and image dwarfs the power of other literature in the 20th century.
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.
Human models are more vivid and more persuasive than explicit moral commands.
Technology is so much fun but we can drown in our technology. The fog of information can drive out knowledge.
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance - it is the illusion of knowledge.
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.
We need not be theologians to see that we have shifted responsibility for making the world interesting from God to the newspaperman.
Reading is like the sex act - done privately, and often in bed.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire public relations officers.
The courage to imagine the otherwise is our greatest resource, adding color and suspense to all our life.
