Jacques Barzun Quotes

When people disagreed with him he urged them to be objective.

Some readers allow their prejudices to blind them. A good reader knows how to disregard inappropriate responses.

The hardest thing in the world, I now know, is to hold in your head that it is okay to think that you are right, but not to think so necessarily because everyone who disagrees with you is wrong or stupid or duped or bad.

Conservatives need to go where the facts, not ideology, take them.

If you want someone to accept new evidence, make sure to present it to them in a context that doesn’t trigger a defensive, emotional reaction.

The ability and willingness to keep two opposing views in mind at the same time are hallmarks of adulthood.

When I spend a lot of time reading, discussing, or thinking about an area, I'll often really appreciate why a strong viewpoint is true and come to very firm conclusions. But if I am later exposed to a strong opposing view, I frequently find this countervailing view persuasive as well.

Listening to both sides does not necessarily bring about a correct judgment.

There is an almost universal tendency, perhaps an inborn tendency, to suspect the good faith of a man who holds opinions that differ from our own opinions. It obviously endangers the freedom and the objectivity of our discussion if we attack a person instead of attacking an opinion or, more precisely, a theory.

Never presume that just because you disagree with an idea that you must be correct.

I try not to be overly analytical.

I think the biggest mistake I made was this wretched ability to see both sides of an argument.

I think there is only one quality worse than hardness of heart and that is softness of head.

Trust and belief are two prime considerations. You must not allow yourself to be opinionated.

In a controversy the instant we feel anger we have already ceased striving for the truth, and have begun striving for ourselves.

Realists do not fear the results of their study.

Ordinary readers, forgive my paradoxes: one must make them when one reflects; and whatever you may say, I prefer being a man with paradoxes than a man with prejudices.

It's sad that we never get trained to leave assumptions behind.

I think it's important to have perspective and to look at what you don't necessarily want to see.

The more history I learnt, the less interested I got in winning arguments and the more interested in establishing the truth.

Men need knowledge in order to overpower their passions and master their prejudices.

It is only through the opposition of ideas that we can learn to be self-critical, to work towards intellectual humility.

For no art and no religion is possible until we make allowances, until we manage to keep quiet the enfant terrible of logic that plays havoc with the other faculties.

A philosopher goes where the truth leads and has no patience with mere emotion.

Consider the speech, not the speaker.