Jacques Barzun Quotes

Quotes about:

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Hatred, Political, Tolerance

  54 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

  43 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.

  49 Copy quote

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

  Jacques Barzun

  People, Culture, Normal

  6 Copy quote

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Reading, Intellectual, Important

  3 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

  18 Copy quote

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

  Jacques Barzun

  Self, Made, Found

  16 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.

  30 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.

  4 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”

  13 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)

  64 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.

  16 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.

  3 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”

  24 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

  8 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

  12 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

  17 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.

  5 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

  6 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”

  15 Copy quote

• Time and rest are needed for absorption. Psychologists confirm that it is really in the summer that our muscles learn to skate and in the winter, how to swim.

  Jacques Barzun

  Summer, Winter, Swim

  15 Copy quote

• The educated man had throughout the ages found a way to covert passionate activity into silent and motionless pleasure. He can sit still in a room and not perish.

  Jacques Barzun

  Education, Men, Silence

  3 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

  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

  4 Copy quote

• Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.

  Jacques Barzun

  Writing, Bad Writing, Scholarship

  8 Copy quote

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