Quote

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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Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Intellectual
Implication
Mystery
Heredity
Race
Implications
Attention
Offering
Social
Explanation
Make
Factors
Thinking
Philosophical
Personality
Diverts

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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.
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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
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In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
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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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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.
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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.
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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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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?
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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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Tennis belongs to the individualistic past - a hero, or at most a pair of friends or lovers, against the world.
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Simple English is no one’s mother tongue. It has to be worked for.
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You never step in the same river of thought twice, because neither you nor it are the same.
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