Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art. Jacques Barzun More Quotes by Jacques Barzun More Quotes From Jacques Barzun Democracy, to maintain itself, must repeatedly conquer every cell and corner of the nation. How many of our public institutions and private businesses, our schools, hospitals, and domestic hearths are in reality little fascist states where freedom of speech is more rigorously excluded than vermin? Jacques Barzun cells reality school 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. Jacques Barzun artist people world Above all, the ability to feel the force of an argument apart from the substance it deals with is the strongest weapon against prejudice. Jacques Barzun prejudice substance weapons It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism. Jacques Barzun illusion alternatives perfection We cannot appreciate the art of any age without first acquiring an equivalent of the experience it depicts. Jacques Barzun appreciate age art Out of man's mind in free play comes the creation Science. It renews itself, like the generations, thanks to an activity which is the best game of homo ludens: science is in the strictest and best sense a glorious entertainment. Jacques Barzun games men science Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory. This explains why Shaw must either be taken whole or left alone. He must be disassembled and put together again with nothing left out, under pain of incomprehension; for his politics, his art, and his religion - to say nothing of the shape of his sentences - are unique expressions of this enormously enlarged and yet concentrated consciousness. Jacques Barzun pain taken art 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. Jacques Barzun surprise stranger faces Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy Jacques Barzun yield tragedy mind 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. Jacques Barzun democracy citizens important 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. Jacques Barzun excellence calling praise A student under my care owes his first allegiance to himself and not to my specialty; and must not be burdened with my work as if he followed no other and had contracted no obligation under heaven but that of satisfying my requirements. Jacques Barzun requirements care heaven The piano is the social instrument par excellence... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment. Jacques Barzun piano music names Universities incline wits to sophistry and affectation. Jacques Barzun humor literature funny The sole justification of teaching, of the school itself, is that the student comes out of it able to do something he could not do before. I say do and not know, because knowledge that doesn't lead to doing something new or doing something better is not knowledge at all. Jacques Barzun learning teaching school 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. Jacques Barzun sense others me house
