Skip to content

When plugged in, the least elaborate computer can be relied on to work to the fullest extent of its capacity. The greatest mind cannot be relied on for the simplest thing; its variability is its superiority.

— Jacques Barzun

Another quote →

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)

All Jacques Barzun quotes →

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.