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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.

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
Especially
Young
Disillusion
Always
Cynicism
Alternative
Alternatives
Creates
Illusion
Perfection

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Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.
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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.
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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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The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
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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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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.
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Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.
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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.
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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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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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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.
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To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.
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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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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.
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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
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An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
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To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.
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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.
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