Quotes
Authors
Jacques Barzun

"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 possession of knowledge makes for unjust power over others only if used for that very purpose: a physician or lawyer or clergyman can exploit or humiliate others, or he can be a humanitarian and a benefactor. In any case, it is absurd to conjure up behind anybody who exploits his educated status the existence of an "elite" scheming to oppress the rest of us."

-- Jacques Barzun

#Art Quotes #Ignorance Quotes #Physicians Quotes

“The stage of the development of the productive forces determines the political and ideological superstructure of society which are crystallized into a system of social organization.”
“He maybe, possibly, said that if he got word of anyone getting in your way, theyâ€™d find out whether there was any truth to the rumor about him knowing how to kill a man with paper clips.”
“Either it is true that a medicine works or it isn't. It cannot be false in the ordinary sense but true in some alternative sense. If a therapy or treatment is anything more than a placebo, properly conducted double-blind trials, statistically analyzed, will eventually bring it through with flying colours. Many candidates for recognition as orthodox medicines fail the test and are summarily dropped. The alternative label should not (though, alas, it does) provide immunity from the same fate.”
“There is no man ... however wise, who has not at some period of his youth said things, or lived a life, the memory of which is so unpleasant to him that he would gladly expunge it. And yet he ought not entirely to regret it, because he cannot be certain that he has indeed become a wise man -- so far as it is possible for any of us to be wise -- unless he has passed through all the fatuous or unwholesome incarnations by which that ultimate stage must be preceded.”
“Humility is not weakness, but strength under control”
“Playing Japanese characters and being in environments that are Japanese, like a character's apartment or whatever, if you have directors or art directors who just don't know what' s what with Japanese culture, then pretty soon something's just passed through. I've been through many times where I've pointed out the incorrectness of so much of what's been done to a set.”
“Our dead are never dead to us, until we have forgotten them.”
“You make yourself and others suffer just as much when you take offense as when you give offense Ken Keys, JR The more you depend on forces outside yourself, the more you are dominated by them.”

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