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Great cultural changes begin in affectation and end in routine.
Jacques Barzun
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Interpretation

What this quote means

Cultural shifts start as unique expressions but often become normalized and routine over time.

Jacques Barzun suggests that significant changes in culture often begin as deliberate acts of affectation, where individuals or groups intentionally adopt new behaviors or styles. However, as these changes gain traction and become widely accepted, they lose their initial uniqueness and eventually settle into the mundane routine of everyday life, illustrating the inevitable cycle from novelty to normalization.

Themes

Cultural ChangeRoutineAffectationNormalizationChange

In practice

Example use cases

During a lecture on social evolution, I could use this quote to illustrate how trends emerge.

More from Jacques Barzun

Let us face a pluralistic world in which there are no universal churches, no single remedy for all diseases, no one way to teach or write or sing, no magic diet, no world poets, and no chosen races, but only the wretched and wonderfully diversified human race.
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Machines are admirable and tyrannize only with the user's consent. Where, then, is the enemy? Not where the machine gives relief from drudgery but where human judgment abdicates. The smoothest machine-made product of the age is the organization man, for even the best organizing principle tends to corrupt, and the mechanical principle corrupts absolutely.
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In teaching you cannot see the fruit of a day's work. It is invisible and remains so, maybe for twenty years.
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I can only think that the book is read because it deals with the difficulties of schooling, which do not change. Please note: the difficulties, not the problems. Problems are solved or disappear with the revolving times. Difficulities remain. It will always be difficult to teach well, to learn accurately; to read, write, and count readily and competently; to acquire a sense of history and start one's education or anothers.
Jacques BarzunRead
Convince yourself that you are working in clay, not marble, on paper not eternal bronze: Let that first sentence be as stupid as it wishes.
Jacques BarzunRead
The world has long observed that small acts of immorality, if repeated, will destroy character. It is equally manifest, though never said, that uttering nonsense and half-truth without cease ends by destroying Intellect
Jacques BarzunRead

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