Jacques Barzun Quotes - Page 5

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• By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.

  Jacques Barzun

  Artist, People, World

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• After being boxed in by man and his constructions in Europe and the East, the release into space is exhilarating. The horizon is a huge remote circle, and no hills intervene.

  Jacques Barzun

  Men, Space, Europe

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• The history of creation is but a succession of battles between amateurs of genius-inspired heretics- and orthodox professionals.

  Jacques Barzun

  Battle, Genius, Inspired

  Jacques Barzun (1984). “Critical Questions: On Music and Letters, Culture and Biography, 1940-1980”, p.35, University of Chicago Press

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• A student under my care owes his first allegiance to himself and not to my specialty; and must not be burdened with my work as if he followed no other and had contracted no obligation under heaven but that of satisfying my requirements.

  Jacques Barzun

  Heaven, Care, Requirements

  "A Loyalty Oath for Scholars". The American Scholar, Summer 1951.

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• We may complain and cavil at the anarchy which is the amateurs natural element, but in soberness we must agree that if the amateur did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.

  Jacques Barzun

  Complaining, Would Be, Natural Elements

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• Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.

  Jacques Barzun

  Equality, Sublime, Conventions

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

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• It is not clear to anyone, least of all the practitioners, how science and technology in their headlong course do or should influence ethics and law, education and government, art and social philosophy, religion and the life of the affections. Yet science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Strong, Philosophy

  1964 Science, The Glorious Entertainment.

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• The professionals resemble and recognize each other by virtue of the stigmata that their trade has left upon them. They are like the dog in the fable, whose collar has made an indelible mark around his neck. The amateur is the shaggy wolf whom no dog had better trust too far.

  Jacques Barzun

  Dog, Fables, Necks

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• Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap

  Jacques Barzun

  Swings, Intellectual, Privilege

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

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• The eager or dutiful persons who subject themselves to these tidal waves of the classics and the moderns find everything wonderful in an absent-minded way. The wonder washes over them rather than into them, and one of its effects is to make anything shocking or odd suddenly interesting enough to gain a month's celebrity. And so another by-product of our come-one, come-all policy is the tendency to reward cleverness, not art, and to put one more hurdle in the path of the truly original artist.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Interesting, Rewards

  "A Surfeit of Fine Art". Essay by Jacques Barzun (1986) published in his book "The Culture We Deserve" (p. 127), 1989.

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• The reason why research is like sculpting from memory is that in neither is there a concrete visible subject to copy directly. The subject - as sculptors themselves are fond of saying - is hidden in the block of material.

  Jacques Barzun

  Memories, Block, Research

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• An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.

  Jacques Barzun

  Artist, Reality, May

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• Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.

  Jacques Barzun

  Art, Memorable, Form

  The House of Intellect (1959) ch. 6

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• In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of consciousness--a color, a weight, a texture--that we tend to think of as simple and single. Perceptions are complex affairs that embrace sensation together with other, associated or revived contents of the mind, including emotions.

  Jacques Barzun

  Simple, Thinking, Color

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• To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.

  Jacques Barzun

  Hate, Past, Self

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• Schools are not intended to moralize a wicked world, but to impart knowledge and develop intelligence, with only two social aims in mind: prepare to take on one's share in the world's work, and perhaps in addition, lend a hand in improving society, after schooling is done.

  Jacques Barzun

  School, Hands, Two

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