20+ Alfred Kazin Quotes On Education, Socialism And Native Grounds

Alfred Kazin was an American critic and literary scholar. He was a major figure in the New York Intellectuals and a leading voice of modernism in American literary criticism. He wrote extensively on American literature and culture, and his works include On Native Grounds and A Walker in the City. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Alfred Kazin on education, life, socialism.

I liked reading and working out my ideas in the midst of that endless crowd walking in and out of the (library) looking for something. I, too, was seeking fame and fortune by sitting at the end of a long golden table next to the sets of American authors on the open shelves. — Alfred Kazin

A classic is a book that survives the circumstances that made it possible yet alone keeps those circumstances alive. — Alfred Kazin

Modern American literature was born in protest, born in rebellion, born out of the sense of loss and indirection which was imposed upon the new generations out of the realization that the old formal culture-the "New England idea"-could no longer serve. — Alfred Kazin

What happens whenever we convert a writer into a symbol is that we lose the writer himself in all his indefeasible singularity, his particular inimitable genius. — Alfred Kazin

When a writer talks about his work, he's talking about a love affair. — Alfred Kazin

Is it strange, then, that in a literature so concerned with realism and with personal liberation this refusal and impoverishment of the life of the spirit have always nourished the screamers, the eccentrics, the pseudo-Whitmans, the calculating terrorists? — Alfred Kazin

If we practiced medicine like we practice education, we'd look for the liver on the right side and left side in alternate years. — Alfred Kazin

Brooklyn Heights itself is a window on the port. Here, where the perspective is fixed by the towers of Manhattan and the hills of New Jersey and Staten Island, the channels running between seem fingers of the world ocean. Here one can easily embrace the suggestion, which Whitman felt so easily, that the whole American world opens out from here, north and west. — Alfred Kazin

Altogether beautiful in the power of its feeling. As beautiful as anything in Thoreau or Hemingway. — Alfred Kazin

Art changes all the time, but it never "improves." It may go down, or up, but it never improves as technology and medicine improve. — Alfred Kazin

The conviction of tragedy that rises out of his [John Dos Passos's] work is the steady protest of a sensitive democratic conscience against the tyranny and the ugliness of society, against the failure of a complete human development under industrial capitalism. — Alfred Kazin

What need had the businessman to scribble or philosophize when he dominated the imagination of his time and the frantic materialism that was his principle of existence had become the haunting central figure in contemporary life? — Alfred Kazin

I had to admit that in his old-fashioned way O'Hara was still romantic about sex; like Scott Fitzgerald, he thought of it as an upper-class prerogative. — Alfred Kazin

A year after Hemingway died on the front page, Faulkner went off after a binge, as if dying was nobody's business but his own. — Alfred Kazin

We never know how much has been missing from our lives until a true writer comes along. — Alfred Kazin

History has become more important than ever because of the to unprecedented ability of the historical sciences to take in man's life on earth as a whole. — Alfred Kazin

Only power can get people into a position where they may be noble. — Alfred Kazin

To have a sense of history one must consider oneself a piece of history. — Alfred Kazin

One writes to make a home for oneself, on paper, in time and in others' minds. — Alfred Kazin

The writer writes in order to teach himself, to understand himself, to satisfy himself; the publishing of his ideas, though it brings gratification, is a curious anticlimax. — Alfred Kazin

Life Lessons by Alfred Kazin

1. Alfred Kazin's work emphasizes the importance of understanding the past in order to make sense of the present. He reminds us that our experiences, both personal and collective, shape our understanding of the world.
2. His writings demonstrate the power of literature to capture the complexity of human experience and to offer insight into the human condition.
3. Through his work, Kazin encourages us to reflect on our own experiences and to appreciate the beauty and significance of literature.