Quote

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.

Jacques Barzun

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Jacques Barzun
Age: 104 †
Born: 1907
Born: November 30
Died: 2012
Died: October 25
Critic
Cultural Historian
Historian
Philosopher
University Teacher
Writer
Energy
History
Fanatical
Strong
Pervasive
Science
Mode
Thought
Source
Emotion
Faith

More quotes by Jacques Barzun

Image
Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
Jacques Barzun
Image
If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
Jacques Barzun
Image
For the educated, the authority of science rested on the strictness of its methods for the mass, it rested on the powers of explanation.
Jacques Barzun
Image
The piano is the social instrument par excellence... drawing-room furniture, a sign of bourgeois prosperity, the most massive of the devices by which the young are tortured in the name of education and the grown-up in the name of entertainment.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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.
Jacques Barzun
Image
To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.
Jacques Barzun
Image
Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
Jacques Barzun
Image
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
Jacques Barzun
Image
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.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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?
Jacques Barzun
Image
Above all, do not talk yourself out of good ideas by trying to expound them at haphazard meetings.
Jacques Barzun
Image
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.
Jacques Barzun
Image
Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
Jacques Barzun
Image
It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.
Jacques Barzun
Image
On reflection, moral judgment in the arts appears rather as a tribute to their power to influence emotion and possibly conduct. And reflecting further on what some critics do today, one sees that a good many have merely shifted the ground of their moralism, transferring their impulse of righteousness to politics and social issues.
Jacques Barzun
Image
Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
Jacques Barzun
Image
The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
Jacques Barzun
Image
Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
Jacques Barzun