Sunday, December 22, 2024 Text is available under the CC BY-SA 3.0 licence.

Jacques Barzun

« All quotes from this author
 

The ever-present impulse is to push against restriction and, in so doing, to feel intolerably hemmed in. Thus in practice, every liberation increases the sense of oppression. Nor is the paradox merely in the mind: the laws enacted to secure the rights of every person and group, by creating protective boundaries, create new barriers.
--
"The Bugbear of Relativism," p. 97

 
Jacques Barzun

» Jacques Barzun - all quotes »



Tags: Jacques Barzun Quotes, Authors starting by B


Similar quotes

 

Science knows no boundaries, and efforts to create barriers – whether to keep new ideas within or to prevent new ones from entering from the outside – have universally proved harmful to progress.

 
Sidney Drell
 

And let's put one lie to rest for all time: the lie that men are oppressed, too, by sexism--the lie that there can be such a thing as 'men's liberation groups.' Oppression is something that one group of people commits against another group specifically because of a 'threatening' characteristic shared by the latter group--skin color or sex or age, etc. The oppressors are indeed FUCKED UP by being masters (racism hurts whites, sexual stereotypes are harmful to men) but those masters are not OPPRESSED. Any master has the alternative of divesting himself of sexism or racism—the oppressed have no alternative—for they have no power—but to fight. In the long run, Women's Liberation will of course free men—but in the short run it's going to COST men a lot of privilege, which no one gives up willingly or easily. Sexism is NOT the fault of women—kill your fathers, not your mothers.

 
Robin Morgan
 

The truly creative mind in any field is no more than this: a human creature born abnormally, inhumanly sensitive. To him, a touch is a blow, a sound is a noise, a misfortune is a tragedy, a joy is an ecstasy, a friend is a lover, a lover is a god, and failure is death. Add to this cruelly delicate organism the overpowering necessity to create, create, create — so that without the creating of music or poetry or books or buildings or something of meaning, his very breath is cut off from him. He must create, must pour out creation. By some strange, unknown, inward urgency he is not really alive unless he is creating.

 
Pearl Buck
 

The beginning of this work is just how to get people to remember how to play, to be in play. Once you're in play, you're in the moment. You're not judgmental, you're enjoying each other, you're accepting of everything that goes on; you're trusting yourself and just doing the game as best as you can. Your critical mind is gone, your analytical mind is not involved. Really, it's just the flow that goes on between human beings, the group the power of the ensemble.
As with any ensemble, it is the team effort or the group effort that makes the individual grow or look good. That's what the center of this work is all about, what these games and exercises are all about . . . breaking down barriers between people, empowering the individual to believe in their own associations and ideas, uncovering the courage to create, the courage to communicate.

 
Martin de Maat
 

It is the furious longing to give finality to the Universe, to make it conscious and personal, that has brought us to believe in God, to wish that God may exist, to create God, in a word. To create Him, yes! This saying ought not to scandalize even the most devout theist. For to believe in God is, in a certain sense, to create Him, although He first creates us. It is He who is continually creating Himself.

 
Miguel de Unamuno
© 2009–2013Quotes Privacy Policy | Contact