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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.

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
Mother
Skip
Able
Magnitude
Ever
Productive
Producers
Creator
Creativity
Stage
Loafing
Whatever
Gestation

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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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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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For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.
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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
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The educated man had throughout the ages found a way to covert passionate activity into silent and motionless pleasure. He can sit still in a room and not perish.
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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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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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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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An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
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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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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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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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Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
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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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Education in the United States is a passion and a paradox. Millions want it, and commend it, and are busy about it. At the same time they degrade it by trying to get it free of charge and free of work.
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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
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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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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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By the time I was 9, I had the conviction that everybody in the world was an artist except plumbers or people who delivered groceries.
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