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I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.

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
History
Always
Think
Pessimist
Thinking
Inevitably
Cheerful
Student
Students
Almost

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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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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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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
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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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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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The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.
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Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
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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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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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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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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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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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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
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The greatest artists have never been men of taste. By never sophisticating their instincts they have never lost the awareness of the great simplicities, which they relish both from appetite and from the challenge these offer to skill in competition with popular art.
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Science is an all-pervasive energy, for it is at once a mode of thought, a source of strong emotion, and a faith as fanatical as any in history.
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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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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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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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