3 Jacques Barzun Quotes on Knowledge

Jacques Barzun quotes on knowledge

14. The truth is, when all is said and done, one does not teach a subject, one teaches a student how to learn it.

35. We seem to live mainly in order to see how we live, and this habit brings on what might be called the externalizing of knowledge; with every new manual there is less need for its internal, visceral presence. The owner or user feels confident that he possesses its contents - there they are, in handy form on the handy shelf. And with their imminent transfer to a computer, that sense of possession will presumably attach itself to the hard disk or the phone number of the data bank. To say this is also to say that the age of ready reference is one in which knowledge inevitably declines into information. The master of so much packaged stuff has less need to grasp context or meaning than his forbears: he can always look it up. His active memory is otherwise engaged anyway, full of the arbitrary names, initials, and code figures essential to carrying on daily life. He can be vague about the rest: he can always check it out.

40. 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.