We Must Abandon The Prevalent Belief In

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.

The Hero Was Distinguished By His Achievement; The Celebrity By His Image Or Trademark. The Hero Created Himself; The Celebrity Is Created By The Media. The Hero Was A Big Man; The Celebrity Is A Big Name.

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.

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.'

The Great Obstacle To Discovering The Shape Of The Earth, The Continents, And The Oceans Was Not Ignorance, But The Illusion Of Knowledge.