Quote

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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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Reality
Institutions
Hospitals
Rigorously
School
Private
Businesses
Vermin
Littles
Speech
Corner
Fascist
States
Nation
Maintain
Repeatedly
Little
Democracy
Cells
Fascists
Many
Public
Conquer
Excluded
Must
Nations
Corners
Domestic
Every
Freedom
Schools
Cell

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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.
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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.
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It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.
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Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.
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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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Time and rest are needed for absorption. Psychologists confirm that it is really in the summer that our muscles learn to skate and in the winter, how to swim.
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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
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Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
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I'll read, and then I'll take naps. When I feel sleep coming on, I give in and don't fight it.
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Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.
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Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
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Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
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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.
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The one thing that unifies men in a given age is not their individual philosophies but the dominant problem that these philosophies are designed to solve.
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