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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.

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
Even
Resembles
Never
Desired
Like
Arrive
Rousseau
Gave
Voltaire
Authority
Assertiveness
Social
Shaw
Form
Assimilate
Right
Wield

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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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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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Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
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Life is given us as a passion.
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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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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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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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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
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Intellect has nothing to do with equality except to respect it as a sublime convention.
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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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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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Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.
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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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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.
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The philosophical implication of race-thinking is that by offering us the mystery of heredity as an explanation, it diverts our attention from the social and intellectual factors that make up personality.
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To denounce does not free the self from what it hates, any more than ignoring the past shuts off its influence.
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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.
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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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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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