Quote

To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.

Jacques Barzun

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Danger
Scapegoats
Lose
Delve
Loses
Entails
History
Scapegoat
May
Grievance
Hard
Depths
Work
Besides
Depth

More quotes by Jacques Barzun

Image
In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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
Image
Take a portion of wit, And fashion it fit, Like a needle, with point and with eye: A point that can wound, An eye to look round, And at folly or vice let it fly
Jacques Barzun
Image
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
Image
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
Image
I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.
Jacques Barzun
Image
For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.
Jacques Barzun
Image
After being boxed in by man and his constructions in Europe and the East, the release into space is exhilarating. The horizon is a huge remote circle, and no hills intervene.
Jacques Barzun
Image
An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
Jacques Barzun
Image
[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
Image
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
Image
Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
Jacques Barzun
Image
Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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
Image
Baseball is a kind of collective chess with arms and legs in full play under sunlight.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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, after schooling is done.
Jacques Barzun
Image
Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.
Jacques Barzun
Image
We may complain and cavil at the anarchy which is the amateurs natural element, but in soberness we must agree that if the amateur did not exist it would be necessary to invent him.
Jacques Barzun
Image
You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.
Jacques Barzun
Image
In producers, loafing is productive and no creator, of whatever magnitude, has ever been able to skip that stage, any more than a mother can skip gestation.
Jacques Barzun