A man who has both feet planted firmly in the air can be safely called a liberal as opposed to the conservative, who has both feet firmly planted in his mouth.
Jacques Barzun

An artist has every right - one may even say a duty - to exhibit his productions as prominently as he can.
Jacques Barzun

Art distills sensation and embodies it with enhanced meaning in a memorable form - or else it is not art.
Jacques Barzun

Except among those whose education has been in the minimalist style, it is understood that hasty moral judgments about the past are a form of injustice.
Jacques Barzun

Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
Jacques Barzun

Idealism springs from deep feelings, but feelings are nothing without the formulated idea that keeps them whole.
Jacques Barzun

If civilization has risen from the Stone Age, it can rise again from the Wastepaper Age.
Jacques Barzun

If it were possible to talk to the unborn, one could never explain to them how it feels to be alive, for life is washed in the speechless real.
Jacques Barzun

In any assembly the simplest way to stop transacting business and split the ranks is to appeal to a principle.
Jacques Barzun

In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
Jacques Barzun


It seems a long time since the morning mail could be called correspondence.
Jacques Barzun

Music is intended and designed for sentient beings that have hopes and purposes and emotions.
Jacques Barzun

Of course, clothing fashions have always been impractical, except in Tahiti.
Jacques Barzun

Only a great mind that is overthrown yields tragedy.
Jacques Barzun

Political correctness does not legislate tolerance; it only organizes hatred.
Jacques Barzun

Since it is seldom clear whether intellectual activity denotes a superior mode of being or a vital deficiency, opinion swings between considering intellect a privilege and seeing it as a handicap.
Jacques Barzun

Teaching is not a lost art, but the regard for it is a lost tradition.
Jacques Barzun

The danger that may really threaten (crime fiction) is that soon there will be more writers than readers.
Jacques Barzun

The intellectuals' chief cause of anguish are one another's works.
Jacques Barzun

The test and the use of man's education is that he finds pleasure in the exercise of his mind.
Jacques Barzun