Jacques Barzun's Quotes

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.

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.

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.

Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in the literal sense - names of familiar figures around the house.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.

Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.

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.

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

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.

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

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

I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.

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

In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.

It is only in the shadows, when some fresh wave, truly original, truly creative, breaks upon the shore, that there will be a rediscovery of the West.