Jacques Barzun Quotes

Quotes about:

• Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.

  Jacques Barzun

  Hatred, Political, Tolerance

  55 Copy quote

• In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.

  Jacques Barzun

  Teacher, Appreciation, Educational

  44 Copy quote

• Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.

  Jacques Barzun

  Inspirational, Education, Appreciation

  1955 In Newsweek, 5 Dec.

  50 Copy quote

• When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.

  Jacques Barzun

  People, Culture, Normal

  7 Copy quote

• Finding oneself was a misnomer; a self is not found but made.

  Jacques Barzun

  Self, Made, Found

  17 Copy quote

• The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.

  Jacques Barzun

  Graduation, Education, Exercise

  20 Copy quote

• The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

  Jacques Barzun

  Teacher, Truth, Science

  "Reasons to De-Test the Schools". The New York Times, October 11, 1988.

  31 Copy quote

• Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.

  Jacques Barzun

  Age, Profession, Old Age

  "Age of Reason". The New Yorker, (p. 103), October 22, 2007.

  5 Copy quote

• The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect

  Jacques Barzun

  Character, Small Acts, Long

  Jacques Barzun (1959). “The House of Intellect”

  14 Copy quote

• no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.

  Jacques Barzun

  Reading, Intellectual, Important

  4 Copy quote

• If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Philosophy, Real

  The House of Intellect ch. 6 (1959)

  65 Copy quote

• Everybody keeps calling for Excellence - excellence not just in schooling, throughout society. But as soon as somebody or something stands out as Excellent, the other shout goes up: "Elitism!" And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. "Standing out" is undemocratic.

  Jacques Barzun

  Excellence, Calling, Praise

  "Begin Here: The Forgotten Conditions of Teaching and Learning" by Jacques Barzun, ("Schooling No Mystery"), 1991.

  17 Copy quote

• If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.

  Jacques Barzun

  Future, Civilization, Vision

  Jacques Barzun (1959). “The House of Intellect”

  25 Copy quote

• I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

  Jacques Barzun

  Thinking, Cheerful, Students

  "Jacques Barzun '27: Columbia Avatar". Columbia Today, January 2006.

  4 Copy quote

• Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

  Jacques Barzun

  Boredom, Historical, Force

  "The age of entropy" by Stephen Moss, www.theguardian.com. March 2, 2001.

  6 Copy quote

• Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.

  Jacques Barzun

  Past, Judging, Style

  9 Copy quote

• Criticism will need an injection of humility that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. Since the critic exists only for introducing and explaining, he must be readily intelligible; he has no special vocabulary: criticism is in no way a science or a system.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Humility, Vocabulary

  Jacques Barzun (1989). “The Culture We Deserve”, p.20, Wesleyan University Press

  13 Copy quote

• Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.

  Jacques Barzun

  Music, Purpose, Emotion

  Jacques Barzun (1984). “Critical Questions: On Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980”, p.61, University of Chicago Press

  18 Copy quote

• Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.

  Jacques Barzun

  Passion, Trying, United States

  Jacques Barzun (1959). “The House of Intellect”

  16 Copy quote

• To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.

  Jacques Barzun

  Hard Work, Depth, May

  7 Copy quote

• A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.

  Jacques Barzun

  Men, Air, Feet

  9 Copy quote

• Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.

  Jacques Barzun

  Country, War, Party

  Jacques Barzun (1958). “Darwin, Marx, Wagner: critique of a heritage”, Doubleday Books

  7 Copy quote

• I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.

  Jacques Barzun

  Book, Writing, Learning

  6 Copy quote

• Maxims in times of danger are useless, experience is incommunicable. The knotted strands of life, desire, assumptions, and moral codes cannot be unsnarled; they can only be cut, which is what happens when an air raid occurs, with a silencing fortissimo like the finale of a Beethoven symphony.

  Jacques Barzun

  Cutting, Air, Symphony

  5 Copy quote

• Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.

  Jacques Barzun

  Writing, Race, Political

  7 Copy quote

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