The greatest obstacle to discovering the shape of the earth, the continents, and the oceans was not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.
A best-seller was a book which somehow sold well because it was selling well.
The greatest obstacle to discovery is not ignorance – it is the illusion of knowledge.
Freedom means the opportunity to be what we never thought we would be.
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.’
Education is learning what you didn’t even know you didn’t know.
Some are born great, some achieve greatness, and some hire PR officers.
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.
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.