Jacques Barzun quotes

Teaching is not a lost art, but regard for teaching is a lost tradition. (Jacques Barzun)
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred. View quote
Jacques Barzun
We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and moral integrity hold in balance. But greatness of intellect and feeling, or soul and conduct - magnanimity, in short - does occur; it is not a myth for boy scouts, and its reality is important, if only to give us the true range of the term "human," which we so regularly define by its lower reaches. View quote
Jacques Barzun
The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing. View quote
Jacques Barzun
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. View quote
Jacques Barzun
The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve. View quote
Jacques Barzun
When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity. The greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Like Rousseau, whom he resembles even more than he resembles Voltaire, Shaw never gave a social form to his assertiveness, never desired to arrive and to assimilate himself, or wield authority as of right. View quote
Jacques Barzun
No one has ever used historical examples, near or remote, with the detail, precision, and directness to be found in every page of Shaw. (Jacques Barzun)
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. View quote
Jacques Barzun
On reflection, moral judgment in the arts appears rather as a tribute to their power to influence emotion and possibly conduct. And reflecting further on what some critics do today, one sees that a good many have merely shifted the ground of their moralism, transferring their impulse of righteousness to politics and social issues. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all things we deem important to the society and the individual. View quote
Jacques Barzun
I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Strangers who have seen Shaw face to face are wont to report their surprise at his gentleness and consideration, his willingness to listen and his complete lack of pose. View quote
Jacques Barzun
My notion about any artist is that we honor him best by reading him, by playing his music, by seeing his plays or by looking at his pictures. We don't need to fall all over ourselves with adjectives and epithets. Let's play him more. View quote
Jacques Barzun
He sent me a letter from India, where I think he got a fellowship to spend a year or so. He sent me a letter that read, I've just met a wonderful guru who can read minds. "I want you to" - Allen had a way of saying "I want you to do this, I want you to do that" - "I want you to get him a position in the Philosophy Department." I wrote back, "Dear Allen, the members of the Philosophy Department want nothing so little as to have their minds read." View quote
Jacques Barzun
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. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions. View quote
Jacques Barzun
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)
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Like Nietzsche, he rails at romanticism, but it is evident that what they both mean by the word is the clichés of second-hand romance. Historic romanticism is in fact the ground-work of their philosophy. View quote
Jacques Barzun
History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for resurrection; it mingles many waters and holds in solution invisible substances stolen from distant soils. View quote
Jacques Barzun
Being law-abiding means filing a paper on time, not parking near a hydrant, and getting a zoning variance before moving a fence on one's own property. A world continually tighter in these ways intensifies the search for loopholes, tempts the unscrupulous to invent them, hardens the cynic, and keeps alive the urge to break loose. Such pulses of thought and feeling are bound to take away the ease and pleasure of ethical conduct. Habitual morality is baffled by the stop-and-go, and people's disregard of injunctions causes no surprise; it seems rather to show firmness of mind. View quote
Jacques Barzun