Quotes by Jacques Barzun

About Jacques Barzun:

Jacques Martin Barzun is best known as a philosopher of education. In the book Teacher in America (1945), Barzun influenced the training of schoolteachers in the United States.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about people in the past are a form of injustice.

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

The root difficulty in all cases was the state of being blind and deaf to words-- not seeing the words for the prose. Being adults, they had forgotten what every child understands, which is giving and taking a meaning is not automatic and inevitable

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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.

Jacques Barzun

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.

Jacques Barzun

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.

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, a...

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.

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.

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

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

Jacques Barzun

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.

Jacques Barzun

Author Bio

  • NameJacques Barzun
  • DescriptionHistorian
  • BornNovember 30, 1907
  • DiedOctober 25, 2012
  • CountryUnited States Of America; France
  • ProfessionCultural Historian; Historian; Philosopher
  • AwardsGuggenheim Fellowship; Presidential Medal Of Freedom; National Humanities Medal