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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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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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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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Above all, the ability to feel the force of an argument apart from the substance it deals with is the strongest weapon against prejudice.
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Music, not being made up of objects nor referring to objects, is intangible and ineffable it can only be as it were inhaled by the spirit: the rest is silence.
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The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
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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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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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If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
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Life is given us as a passion.
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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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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
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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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Speech, after all, is in some measure an expression of character, and flexibility in its use is a good way to tell your friends from the robots.
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When people accept futility and the absurd as normal, the culture is decadent.
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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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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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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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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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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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Old age is like learning a new profession. And not one of your own choosing.
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