"Knowledge is not simply another commodity. On the contrary. Knowledge is never used up. It increases by diffusion and grows by dispersion"
About this Quote
Boorstin’s line is a quiet argument against the default economic metaphor we keep trying to pin on ideas. Calling knowledge “not simply another commodity” isn’t just a definitional quibble; it’s a challenge to the assumption that value depends on scarcity. Markets reward what can be hoarded, fenced off, and depleted. Knowledge, he insists, runs on a different physics: it doesn’t diminish when shared, it multiplies.
The phrasing matters. “Never used up” is almost provocatively literal, a rebuke to the intuition that giving something away must cost you. Then he stacks “diffusion” and “dispersion” like a scientist describing a reaction: spread it out and it grows. The subtext is democratic and anti-monopolistic. If knowledge gains power by circulating, then gatekeeping isn’t just elitist; it’s self-defeating. Treating knowledge like property - locking it behind paywalls, patents, or institutional prestige - may protect revenue, but it also throttles the very engine that makes societies more capable.
Contextually, Boorstin wrote across an era when mass education, broadcast media, and later the early information economy reshaped who could access expertise. As a historian of American invention and public life, he’s not romanticizing “information” as virtue. He’s pointing to a civic reality: a healthy culture depends on shared understanding that can be built upon, corrected, and refined. His sentence reads like a policy brief in disguise - a defense of libraries, universities, open inquiry, and the messy, cumulative public conversation that turns private insight into collective progress.
The phrasing matters. “Never used up” is almost provocatively literal, a rebuke to the intuition that giving something away must cost you. Then he stacks “diffusion” and “dispersion” like a scientist describing a reaction: spread it out and it grows. The subtext is democratic and anti-monopolistic. If knowledge gains power by circulating, then gatekeeping isn’t just elitist; it’s self-defeating. Treating knowledge like property - locking it behind paywalls, patents, or institutional prestige - may protect revenue, but it also throttles the very engine that makes societies more capable.
Contextually, Boorstin wrote across an era when mass education, broadcast media, and later the early information economy reshaped who could access expertise. As a historian of American invention and public life, he’s not romanticizing “information” as virtue. He’s pointing to a civic reality: a healthy culture depends on shared understanding that can be built upon, corrected, and refined. His sentence reads like a policy brief in disguise - a defense of libraries, universities, open inquiry, and the messy, cumulative public conversation that turns private insight into collective progress.
Quote Details
| Topic | Knowledge |
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