Jacques Barzun

The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.

— Jacques Barzun

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

Writing, at least a craft and at its best an art, aspiring to the unique, is the most difficult to learn.

— Jacques Barzun

In producers, loafing is productive; and no creator, of whatever magnitude, has ever been able to skip that stage, any more than…

— Jacques Barzun

Look for all fancy wordings and get rid of themAvoid all terms and expressions, old or new, that embody affectation.

— Jacques Barzun

Baseball is a kind of collective chess with arms and legs in full play under sunlight.

— Jacques Barzun

Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell…

— Jacques Barzun

The reason teaching has to go on is that children are not born human; they are made so.

— Jacques Barzun

Science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith…

— Jacques Barzun

Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.

— Jacques Barzun

Bernard Shaw remains the only model we have of what the citizen of a democracy should be: an informed participant in all…

— Jacques Barzun

To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an…

— Jacques Barzun

Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied…

— Jacques Barzun

“The root difficulty in all cases was the state of being blind and deaf to words-- not seeing the words for the…

— Jacques Barzun

Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering…

— Jacques Barzun

“Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about people in the…

— Jacques Barzun

Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game -…

— Jacques Barzun

The educated man had throughout the ages found a way to covert passionate activity into silent and motionless pleasure. He can sit…

— Jacques Barzun

Criticism will need an injection of humility that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally…

— Jacques Barzun

In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one…

— Jacques Barzun

Among the words that can be all things to all men, the word "race" has a fair claim to being the most…

— Jacques Barzun

On the one hand, society needs a common faith and vigorous institutions with the power to coerce; and on the other, the…

— Jacques Barzun

The nation in arms is virtually a communist state: the people must be paid wages and fed and protected and regimented behind…

— Jacques Barzun

I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please…

— Jacques Barzun

“The motives behind scientism are culturally significant. They have been mixed, as usual: genuine curiosity in search of truth; the rage for…

— Jacques Barzun

The eager or dutiful persons who subject themselves to these tidal waves of the classics and the moderns find everything wonderful in…

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.

— Jacques Barzun

It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.

— 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

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

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun

“[The prince] dare not let ethics keep him from doing whatever evil must be done to preserve himself and the state.”

— Jacques Barzun

Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to…

— Jacques Barzun

Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.

— Jacques Barzun

I once worked as a salesman and was very independent. I took orders from no one.

— Jacques Barzun

[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does…

— Jacques Barzun

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

— Jacques Barzun