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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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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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Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
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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.
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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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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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The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
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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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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.
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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
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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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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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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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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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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
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