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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.

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
Social
Merely
Appears
Art
Judgment
Impulse
Moralism
Power
Emotion
Possibly
Transferring
Today
Influence
Arts
Shifted
Many
Issues
Sees
Tribute
Good
Politics
Reflection
Reflecting
Moral
Critics
Conduct
Rather
Ground
Righteousness

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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
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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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An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
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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 book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
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I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.
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Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy
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To watch a football game is to be in a prolonged neurotic doubt as to what you're seeing. It's more like an emergency happening at a distance than a game. I don't wonder the spectators take to drink.
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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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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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The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
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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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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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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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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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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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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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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
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The professionals resemble and recognize each other by virtue of the stigmata that their trade has left upon them. They are like the dog in the fable, whose collar has made an indelible mark around his neck. The amateur is the shaggy wolf whom no dog had better trust too far.
Jacques Barzun