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
Jacques Barzun quotes about
hands two soul
On the one hand, society needs a common faith and vigorous institutions with the power to coerce; and on the other, the individual as a human soul or as the bearer of a new and possibly saving heresy, must be free. It is difficult enough to reconcile these two needs, but the problem holds another hazard: the need of action under the pressure of time.
writing opposites names
Grab a pen and put down some words - your name even - and a title: something to see, to revise, to carve, to do over in the opposite way
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.
writing race political
Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
pride vanity static
Vanity is a static thing. It puts it faith in what it has, and is easily wounded. Pride is active, and satisfied only with what it can do, hence accustomed not to feel small stings.
baseball team school
Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball, the rules and realities of the game - and do it by watching first some high school or small-town teams.
reality artist may
An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
morning fog long
It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.
book perfect form
The book, like the bicycle, is a perfect form.
reading intellectual important
no subject of study is more important than reading…all other intellectual powers depend on it.
mean simple agreement
Regarding the idea of race, .. no agreement seems to exist about what race means. Race seems to embody a fact as simple and as obvious as the noonday sun, but if that is so, why the endless wrangling about the idea and the facts of race. What is a race? How can it be recognized? Who constitute the several races?.
splits way principles
In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.
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.
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.