Word: boorstins
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...cobbled together. This country, after all, was created by passionately engaged amateurs. The American spirit really is the amateur spirit. The great mass of European settlers were amateur explorers, and their grandchildren and great-grandchildren who created the U.S. were amateur politicians. "I see democracy," the late historian Daniel Boorstin wrote, as "government by amateurs, as a way of confessing the limits of our knowledge." In the early 19th century, Alexis de Tocqueville approvingly noted the absence of "public careers" in America - that is, the scarcity of professional politicians. (See 25 people to blame for the financial crisis...
...20th century Japanese Zen master Shunryu Suzuki, who spent the last dozen years of his life in America, famously wrote that "in the beginner's mind there are many possibilities, but in the expert's mind there are few." Which sounds to me very much like the core of Boorstin's amateur spirit. "The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance," Boorstin wrote, "but the illusion of knowledge." (Watch TIME's video of Peter Schiff trash-talking the markets...
...grown to 300. “It became one of the largest groups on campus,” he says.The year saw Harvard’s second annual Gay and Lesbian Awareness Day, contributing to an increasing awareness of gay issues among the straight population.But minorities, says Robert O. Boorstin ’81, who was president of The Crimson in 1980, “were powerful out of all proportion to their numbers.”Recalling Schatz’s incredible prominence on campus, he says, “It was not an easy time...
...Harvard’s intellectual heavyweights endorsed him, including John Kenneth Galbraith, Samuel P. Huntington, and Richard E. Neustadt.But in November, Ronald Reagan won the presidency by a landslide. That was an outcome few Harvard students had anticipated.There were only about 100 Reagan supporters on campus, Robert O. Boorstin ’81 says. And, on a predominately liberal campus, they were something of a “silent minority,” Richard L.A Weiner ’81 says. “I think there was a lot of shock through the student body when Reagan was elected...
...afternoon Charles was scheduled to take a spin around the Library of Congress with the noted scholar and Librarian of Congress Daniel Boorstin, who would show the Prince some original manuscripts relating to the Constitution. Diana, meanwhile, planned to accompany Nancy to Straight, a drug-rehabilitation center in Springfield, Va. Like stylish clothes and a penchant for being elegantly thin, concern about drug abuse is something the two women have in common...