Jacques Barzun

Life is given us as a passion.

— Jacques Barzun

Always old-fashioned

— Jacques Barzun

“[...] the state is not immoral but amoral; half of it exists outside morality”

— Jacques Barzun

Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.

— Jacques Barzun

It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

The ascetic is often a sensualist who has reached the limit of his capacity.

— Jacques Barzun

Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation.

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

Time and rest are needed for absorption. Psychologists confirm that it is really in the summer that our muscles learn to skate…

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

“When all around take fundamental ideas for granted, these must be the truth. For most minds there is no comfort like it.”

— Jacques Barzun

For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods; for the mass, it rested on the powers…

— Jacques Barzun

The mind tends to run along the groove of one's intention and overlook the actual expression.

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid…

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

History, like a vast river, propels logs, vegetation, rafts, and debris; it is full of live and dead things, some destined for…

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private…

— Jacques Barzun

Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in…

— Jacques Barzun

A student under my care owes his first allegiance to himself and not to my specialty; and must not be burdened with…

— Jacques Barzun

The reason why research is like sculpting from memory is that in neither is there a concrete visible subject to copy directly.…

— Jacques Barzun

The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the…

— Jacques Barzun

Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition,…

— Jacques Barzun

We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and…

— Jacques Barzun

Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from…

— Jacques Barzun

One great aim of revision is to cut out. In the exuberance of composition it is natural to throw in - as…

— Jacques Barzun

Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains…

— Jacques Barzun

“We hear them continually on TV: hence they occur first when it is our turn to talk. In this regard, talk may…

— Jacques Barzun

Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the…

— Jacques Barzun

In ordinary speech the words perception and sensation tend to be used interchangeably, but the psychologist distinguishes. Sensations are the items of…

— Jacques Barzun

“First Principle: Have a point and make it by means of the best word.”

— Jacques Barzun

The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.

— Jacques Barzun

Boredom and fatigue are great historical forces.

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

— Jacques Barzun

Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment

— Jacques Barzun