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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.

— Jacques Barzun

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Philosophy

More quotes by Jacques Barzun

The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

Shaw does not merely decorate a proposition, but makes his way from point to point through new and difficult territory.

Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943)

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

A person is not a democrat thanks to his ignorance of literature and the arts, nor an elitist because he or she has cultivated them.

The Culture We Deserve (1989)

Seeing clearly within himself and always able to dodge around the ends of any position, including his own, Shaw assumed from the start the dual role of prophet and gadfly.

Bernard Shaw in Twilight (1943)

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The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents.

H. P. Lovecraft The Call of Cthulhu (1926)

There is no governor anywhere; you are all absolutely free. There is no restraint that cannot be escaped.

Robert Anton Wilson

Every morning
I shall concern myself anew about the boundary
Between the love-deed-Yes and the power-deed-No
And pressing forward honor reality.

Martin Buber Power and Love (1926)

In the province of the mind, what one believes to be true is true or becomes true, within certain limits to be found experientially and experimentally. These limits are further beliefs to be transcended.

John C. Lilly The Human Biocomputer (1974)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Jacques Barzun (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.