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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.

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
Methods
Explanation
Powers
Educated
Method
Mass
Authority
Strictness
Science
Rested

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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
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It is always some illusion that creates disillusion, especially in the young, for whom the only alternative to perfection is cynicism.
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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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The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
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Bad writing, it is easily verified, has never kept scholarship from being published.
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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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Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
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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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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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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 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.
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Life is given us as a passion.
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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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Highly-adaptive, informal networks move diagonally and eliptically, skipping entire functions to get things done.
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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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I have always been - I think any student of history almost inevitably is - a cheerful pessimist.
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Finding oneself was a misnomer a self is not found but made.
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Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
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Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
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Science is, in the best and strictest sense, glorious entertainment
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