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The history of Western science confirms the aphorism that the great menace to progress is not ignorance but the illusion of knowledge.

— Daniel J. Boorstin Cleopatra's Nose: Essays on the Unexpected (1995)

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Notes from Wikiquote

Often misquoted as, "The greatest enemy of knowledge is not ignorance, it is the illusion of knowledge," and often misattributed to Stephen Hawking

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More quotes by Daniel J. Boorstin

These creators, makers of the new, can never become obsolete, for in the arts there is no correct answer.

The Creators: A History of Heroes of the Imagination (1992)

Education is learning what you didn't even know you didn't know.

A celebrity is a person who is known for his well-knownness.

The Image: A Guide to Pseudo-Events in America (1961)

The Republic of Technology where we will be living is a feedback world.

The Republic of Technology (1978)

While the Jeffersonian did not flatly deny the Creator's power to perform miracles, he admired His refusal to do so.

The Lost World of Thomas Jefferson (1948)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

All religions, arts and sciences are branches of the same tree. All these aspirations are directed toward ennobling man's life, lifting it from the sphere of mere physical existence and leading the individual towards freedom.

Albert Einstein Moral Decay (1937)

Science and religion are two human enterprises sharing many features.

Freeman Dyson Infinite in All Directions (1988)

To doubt everything or to believe everything are two equally convenient solutions; both dispense with the necessity of reflection.

Henri Poincaré Science and Hypothesis (1901)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Daniel J. Boorstin (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.