Criticism will need an injection of humility that is, a recognition of its role as ancillary to the arts, needed only occasionally in a temporary capacity. Since the critic exists only for introducing and explaining, he must be readily intelligible; he has no special vocabulary: criticism is in no way a science or a system.

Jacques Barzun

Categorized in : Art Humility Vocabulary

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

Jacques Barzun

tolerance political hatred

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

Jacques Barzun

education appreciation inspirational

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

Jacques Barzun

educational appreciation teacher

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

Jacques Barzun

truth teacher science

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

real philosophy art

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

Jacques Barzun

future vision civilization

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

Jacques Barzun

exercise education graduation

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

Jacques Barzun

music emotion purpose

Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.

Jacques Barzun

united-states passion trying

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

Jacques Barzun

self found made

The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.

Jacques Barzun

practice rights law

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

style judging past

Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.

Jacques Barzun

party war country

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

Jacques Barzun

tahiti clothings fashion

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

Jacques Barzun

advice trying ideas

I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.

Jacques Barzun

learning writing book

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

Jacques Barzun

function done moving

Science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.

Jacques Barzun

emotion strong energy

In a large university, there are as many deans and executive heads as there are schools and departments. Their relations to one another are intricate and periodic; in fact, "galaxy" is too loose a term: it is a planetarium of deans with the President of the University as a central sun. One can see eclipses, inner systems, and oppositions.

Jacques Barzun

president sun school

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.

Jacques Barzun

air feet men