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

Jacques Barzun

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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
English
Worked
Simple
Mother
Tongue

More quotes by Jacques Barzun

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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
Jacques Barzun
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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
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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
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On reflection, moral judgment in the arts appears rather as a tribute to their power to influence emotion and possibly conduct. And reflecting further on what some critics do today, one sees that a good many have merely shifted the ground of their moralism, transferring their impulse of righteousness to politics and social issues.
Jacques Barzun
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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
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Like Rousseau, whom he resembles even more than he resembles Voltaire, Shaw never gave a social form to his assertiveness, never desired to arrive and to assimilate himself, or wield authority as of right.
Jacques Barzun
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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
Jacques Barzun
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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
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You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.
Jacques Barzun
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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
Jacques Barzun
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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
Jacques Barzun
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The philosophical implication of race-thinking is that by offering us the mystery of heredity as an explanation, it diverts our attention from the social and intellectual factors that make up personality.
Jacques Barzun
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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
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[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand the original with which to match the copy does not exist.
Jacques Barzun
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An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
Jacques Barzun
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Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.
Jacques Barzun
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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
Jacques Barzun
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Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
Jacques Barzun
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
Jacques Barzun
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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
Jacques Barzun