Jacques Barzun Quotes

Incremental change does not change lives.

What's amazing is, if young people understood how doing well in school makes the rest of their life so much interesting, they would be more motivated. It's so far away in time that they can't appreciate what it means for their whole life.

When you're young, you want to live fast, but you definitely don't want to die young. At the same time, you want to do things in slow, progressive manner that will benefit you in the future. Don't jump into things.

Delayed gratification is a sweet lesson whose teacher knows the best is not right now, it is yet to be.

A teacher affects eternity; he can never tell where his influence stops.

I was accorded the opportunity to learn by failing - albeit at the cost of a few honourable teachers' sanity - and now I realise what a rare and incredible luxury that is.

Almost nobody gets rich or erudite overnight.

I worked as a barista and a kindergarten teacher. I really love kids and enjoyed every minute of being in a kindergarten.

Education is what remains when what is learned has been taken away.

All human power is a compound of time and patience.

I work with patience, which is almost power.

Nothing really worth having comes quickly and easily. If it did, I doubt that we would ever grow.

Good travels at a snail's pace. Those who want to do good are not selfish, they are not in a hurry, they know that to impregnate people with good requires a long time.

I love teaching. It's a job that lasts forever. Whatever you teach children today travels with them far into the future.

The splendid thing about education is that everyone wants it. Like influenza, you can give it away without losing any of it yourself.

It means being able to resist the urge for immediate gratification and opt for the course of action that will pay off later.

Education is one of the most important tools that you can give somebody.

The drive to learn is as strong as the sexual drive. It begins earlier and lasts longer

If a man keeps cherishing his old knowledge so as continually to be acquiring new, he may be a teacher of others.

It was from my own early experience that I decided there was no use to which money could be applied so productive of good to girls and boys who have good within them and ability and ambition to develop it as the founding of a public library.

We teach what we need to learn.

Were I to solve problems for others they would remain stagnant; they would never grow. It would be a great injustice to them. My approach is to help with cause rather than effect. When I help others, it is by instilling within them the inspiration to work out problems by themselves. If you feed a man a meal, you only feed him for a day-but if you teach a man to grow food, you feed him for a lifetime.

Education is the knowledge of how to use the whole of oneself. Many men use but one or two faculties out of the score with which they are endowed. A man is educated who knows how to make a tool of every faculty, how to open it, how to keep it sharp, and how to apply it to all practical purposes.

Winning and losing aren't all they're cracked up to be, but the trip to the destination is.