Jacques Barzun
Jacques Barzun
Jacques Martin Barzunwas a French-born American historian. Focusing on ideas and culture, he wrote about a wide range of subjects, including baseball and classical music. He was also known as a philosopher of education. In the book Teacher in America, Barzun influenced the training of schoolteachers in the United States...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionEducator
Date of Birth30 November 1907
CountryUnited States of America
natural-elements may anarchy
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.
reality artist may
An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
may fiction crime
The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers
hard-work depth may
To delve into history entails, besides the grievance of hard work, the danger that in the depths one may lose one’s scapegoats.
america heart mind wants whoever
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America,
cultural dawn western
From Dawn to Decadence: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life,
familiar figures household literal marie
Varese, Apollinaire, Ezra Pound, Leger, Gleizes, Severini, Villon, Duchamp, Duchamp-Villon, Marie Laurencin, Cocteau and many others were to me household names in the literal sense - names of familiar figures around the house.
civilization age stones
If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
country war party
Since in every European country between 1870 and 1914 there was a war party demanding armaments, an individualist party demanding ruthless competition, an imperialist party demanding a free hand over backward peoples, a socialist party demanding the conquest of power and a racialist party demanding internal purges against aliens - all of them, when appeals to greed and glory failed, invoked Spencer and Darwin, which was to say science incarnate.
hands history hats
[T]hat is the triumph of history - truth absolute is not at hand; the original with which to match the copy does not exist.
art men skills
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.
integrity passion boys
We are accustomed to the artist scoundrel or specialist in vice, and unaccustomed to the creator in whom passion and reason and moral integrity hold in balance. But greatness of intellect and feeling, or soul and conduct magnanimity, in short does occur; it is not a myth for boy scouts, and its reality is important, if only to give us the true range of the term "human," which we so regularly define by its lower reaches.
excellence calling praise
Everybody keeps calling for Excellence excellence not just in schooling, throughout society. But as soon as somebody or something stands out as Excellent, the other shout goes up: "Elitism!" And whatever produced that thing, whoever praises that result, is promptly put down. "Standing out" is undemocratic.
battle genius inspired
The history of creation is but a succession of battles between amateurs of genius-inspired heretics- and orthodox professionals.