Terry Teachout quote: "As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it."

It's certainly no secret that American students are taught less and less about the canonical lit...
TERRY TEACHOUT

The digital apocalypse continues to blight the lives of television producers, music-industry executi...
TERRY TEACHOUT

I am, as it happens, a baby boomer, but not one who feels any broad-gauge nostalgia for the '60s...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Instrumental music is nonverbal and thus radically ambiguous. It doesn't lend itself to what mig...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Were I to be appointed Secretary of Education, I'd issue a prospectus for a compulsory nationwid...
TERRY TEACHOUT

If you're looking for light entertainment, you can't get much lighter than 'Bye Bye Bird...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Ai Weiwei, who is both a widely admired conceptual artist and a fearless human-rights activist, has ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Century-old records are the closest thing we have to a time machine. To listen to the voice of Theod...
TERRY TEACHOUT

A critic is not a creative artist, is a commenter, a midwife of creativity, but not creative himself...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Fred Astaire never let you see him sweat, but he sweetened his deceptively casual virtuosity with ju...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Most 'Monty Python' fans are, of course, baby boomers, who have long been a nostalgic lot an...
TERRY TEACHOUT

The setting of 'Billy Elliot' is the British miners' strike of 1984-85, about which the ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

You don't have to know anything about the Shakers to appreciate Mr. Copland's score for '...
TERRY TEACHOUT

No cowboy songs, no hoedowns. It's a more serious piece. Yet every bar of 'Appalachian Sprin...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Unlike film and TV, theater is a luxury object, but one that ordinary middle-class people can still ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Most of us remember Nat King Cole as a vocalist. His warm, grainy baritone is still so closely ident...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Not only are most of our citizens fathomlessly ignorant of the glories of American literature, a fas...
TERRY TEACHOUT

'Man and Superman,' first performed in 1905, is by common consent one of George Bernard Shaw...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Samuel Beckett's estate will not license productions of his plays that are not performed as writ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Maine likes to call itself 'America's Vacationland.' For many artists, though, it's ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Useful though they are, the vast majority of dictionaries and encyclopedias are poker-faced pieces o...
TERRY TEACHOUT

No translation can possibly be perfect. Every production and every performance is a different path u...
TERRY TEACHOUT

In 2004, the iPod was a novelty, and tablet computers were a dream. Now we take for granted that we ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Nowadays, most educated people would just as soon stay home and watch 'Breaking Bad' as shel...
TERRY TEACHOUT

I feel quite confident that audiences on both sides of the Atlantic are growing 'dumber,' if...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Does film music really matter to the average moviegoer? A great score, after all, can't save a b...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Even the Impressionists, the most innovative artists of their time, sought to paint realistically. T...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Aesthetes have it all over intellectuals in one very important respect: You'll rarely catch us h...
TERRY TEACHOUT

The first play I ever saw - I was in junior high school - was a high school production of Noel Cowar...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Unlike film, live theater is an anti-naturalistic medium in which character is mainly illuminated th...
TERRY TEACHOUT

I suspect that most playgoers don't understand how inexact a science literary translation is. Ev...
TERRY TEACHOUT

For my part, I like live theater best when it's taut, concentrated and intimate.
TERRY TEACHOUT

Well into the '40s, it wasn't uncommon for big-budget Hollywood movies to contain little or ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Few of us boggle - though we should - at the fact that Louis Armstrong sang and played trumpet with ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

It may well be, of course, that America's pop culture is on balance better than our high art. I ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

For the critic, the word 'best' is like a grenade without a pin: Toss it around too freely, ...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Anna Deavere Smith's new one-woman show bills itself as being about health care, but the truth i...
TERRY TEACHOUT

The backstage play, in which the private lives of theater people are put onstage for the world to se...
TERRY TEACHOUT

The only thing that surprised me about 'Lincoln' is that most of the critics who reviewed th...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Plays are not written but rewritten, and much of the rewriting takes place at the behest of the dire...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Critics at their best are independent voices; people take seriously their responsibility to see as m...
TERRY TEACHOUT

What do you see when you look at a representational painting? Most of the time, the first thing I se...
TERRY TEACHOUT

Just as most of us prefer to watch a trapeze artist work without a net, we like to be absolutely sur...
TERRY TEACHOUT

No, I don't know how to get young people to start listening to jazz again. But I do know this: A...
TERRY TEACHOUT

We were definitely in drought conditions. It's nice to get little shots of precipitation instead of ...
STEVE TEACHOUT

Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.
RANDALL TERRY

If I could reach down in my heart, I would say I'm sorry for every unkind word and thought I eve...
TERRY BRADSHAW

I've traveled all over the country for years speaking in churches, teaching the Ten Commandments...
RANDALL TERRY

If someone doesn't know their Old Testament, they don't know right doctrine, right correctio...
RANDALL TERRY

What kind of America do people want to leave for their children? What horrors are down the road, stu...
RANDALL TERRY

The early Church had nothing but the Old Testament. The New Testament lies hidden in the Old; the Ol...
RANDALL TERRY

If God is sovereign, then it is impossible for civil government to be neutral on issues of law. All ...
RANDALL TERRY

The government forces you to give your money to things you don't believe in, to have your money ...
RANDALL TERRY

In a world without the law of God, you have chaos, oppression, tyranny, and everyone doing what is r...
RANDALL TERRY

If we don't believe in moral absolutes and then we get into a cultural-political debate, how are...
RANDALL TERRY

How long before we have, not just homosexual marriage, but homosexual unions between adult men and s...
RANDALL TERRY

We are saved by grace, not by the works of the law. But don't be so quick to write the law off.
RANDALL TERRY

George Washington understood that the Bible is the place where God's records of right and wrong ...
RANDALL TERRY

We are not at the same place we were in 1973. This country today is drifting, moving steadily toward...
RANDALL TERRY

You don't know how to love God and your neighbor unless you look to the law to define it.
RANDALL TERRY

He who frames the question wins the debate.
RANDALL TERRY

It's kind of fun to listen to Christians who say: I'm a New Testament Christian. What other ...
RANDALL TERRY

We want every human being in the womb to be safe, not have these babies be killed to solve some dile...
RANDALL TERRY

I believe that Clinton is the most wicked and vile President that this nation has ever had.
RANDALL TERRY

The enemies of the Christian religion and the Law of God confuse law with faith.
RANDALL TERRY

I have to believe that people can change, otherwise I deny the Gospel, and I will not do that.
RANDALL TERRY

If it squares with the Scripture, then let's go. If it's in conflict with the Scripture, the...
RANDALL TERRY

Behaviors are a choice. Feelings are sometimes out of our control. Behavior has to do with choices.
RANDALL TERRY

The Law of God reaches into every area of life, and it brings about incredible blessing and incredib...
RANDALL TERRY

Most of the Ten Commandments are negative. The purpose of law is not to mandate good behavior. That ...
RANDALL TERRY

Once you depart from the Ten Commandments as being the foundation of right and wrong, you are in a f...
RANDALL TERRY

The Law of God in the Christian religion is the schoolmaster that leads us to Christ.
RANDALL TERRY

They say a little knowledge is a dangerous thing, but it's not one half so bad as a lot of ignor...
TERRY PRATCHETT

In all seriousness, people think that it's the ideas that are important. Well, everyone has idea...
TERRY PRATCHETT

There are too many guns in the hands of people that shouldn't have guns. There is too much gun v...
TERRY MCAULIFFE

The thing that you think is imperfect about you is the thing that makes you who you are. It separate...
TERRY CREWS

It wasn't until the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was rat...
TERRY GLAVIN

Freeing hostages is like putting up a stage set, which you do with the captors, agreeing on each pie...
TERRY WAITE

I do not, in fact, use many puns. Certainly there are far fewer than people believe. But I suspect t...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Virtue is something you have to get good at, like playing the trombone or tolerating bores at partie...
TERRY EAGLETON

When Kubrick decided to go the black comedy route with his movie, he thought of me to give it that f...
TERRY SOUTHERN

Hurt leads to bitterness, bitterness to anger, travel too far that road and the way is lost.
TERRY BROOKS

The kleptocracy overseen by Chinese President Xi Jinping is more vicious and brutally anti-democrati...
TERRY GLAVIN

I just operate on the assumption that all phone conversations are bugged.
TERRY MCAULIFFE

Open your eyes and then open your eyes again.
TERRY PRATCHETT

A good plan isn't one where someone wins, it's where nobody thinks they've lost.
TERRY PRATCHETT

The reason that the rich were so rich, Vimes reasoned, was because they managed to spend less money....
TERRY PRATCHETT

Night poured over the desert. It came suddenly, in purple. In the clear air, the stars drilled down ...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Chaos is found in greatest abundance wherever order is being sought. It always defeats order, becaus...
TERRY PRATCHETT

She was already learning that if you ignore the rules people will, half the time, quietly rewrite th...
TERRY PRATCHETT

The trouble was that he was talking in philosophy but they were listening in gibberish.
TERRY PRATCHETT

The Haavara agreement allowed the escape of well-to-do German Jews in exchange for the liquidation o...
TERRY GLAVIN

I'm never going to write a book like Anthony Sher did, you know, 'The Broadcaster Prepares.&...
TERRY WOGAN

The BBC is the greatest broadcaster in the world. It's the standard that everyone measures thems...
TERRY WOGAN

Your life is yours and yours alone. Rise up and live it.
TERRY GOODKIND

I'm up to my neck in the real world, every day. Just you try doing your VAT return with a head ful...
TERRY PRACHETT

I know this golf tournament has my name on it but it's not about me. It's about the Louisian...
TERRY BRADSHAW

People can make any political calculation they want. I make decisions what I think is in the best in...
TERRY MCAULIFFE

John Cleese was with a group called Cambridge Circus, who had come to New York, and we became friend...
TERRY GILLIAM

The main trouble with Hollywood is that the guys you have to pitch to, the guys who run the studios,...
TERRY ZWIGOFF

My hat's off to documentary filmmakers. I don't know if I'm ever going back to it. You&#...
TERRY ZWIGOFF

Dawkins considers that all faith is blind faith, and that Christian and Muslim children are brought ...
TERRY EAGLETON

I was doing political cartoons and getting angry to the point where I felt I was going to have to st...
TERRY GILLIAM

Evil is unintelligible. It is just a thing in itself, like boarding a crowded commuter train wearing...
TERRY EAGLETON

Argentina has elected a centre-right president, Mauricio Macri. Bolivia's Evo Morales, having lo...
TERRY GLAVIN

It was commonplace to hear it said, after the Bosnian genocide kicked off in 1992 and the Rwandan ge...
TERRY GLAVIN

It is a long-cherished tradition among a certain type of military thinker that huge casualties are t...
TERRY PRATCHETT

I don't want unnecessary violence, sergeant," said Blouse.
"Right you are, sir!" said the serge...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Often real life is boring and problematic. I love the edited version of it.
TERRY GROSS

This is Art holding a Mirror up to Life. That’s why everything is exactly the wrong way around.
TERRY PRATCHETT

I intend, before the endgame looms, to die sitting in a chair in my own garden with a glass of brand...
TERRY PRATCHETT

The three rules of the Librarians of Time and Space are: 1) Silence; 2) Books must be returned no la...
TERRY PRATCHETT

They stole from rich merchants and temples and kings. They didn't steal from poor people; this was n...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Can't nothing make your life work if you ain't the architect.
TERRY MCMILLAN

What is a diary as a rule? A document useful to the person who keeps it. Dull to the contemporary wh...
HELEN TERRY

William: "I'm sure we can all pull together, sir."
Vetinari: "Oh, I do hope not. Pulling togeth...
TERRY PRATCHETT

The universe, they said, depended for its operation on the balance of four forces which they identif...
TERRY PRATCHETT

I meant," said Ipslore bitterly, "what is there in this world that truly makes living worthwhile?" TERRY PRATCHETT

If cats looked like frogs we'd realize what nasty, cruel little bastards they are. Style. That's wha...
TERRY PRATCHETT

The place where the story happened was a world on the back of four elephants perched on the s...
TERRY PRATCHETT

If you trust in yourself. . .and believe in your dreams. . .and follow your star. . . you'll still g...
TERRY PRATCHETT

If you stopped tellin' people it's all sorted out after they're dead, they might try sorting it all ...
TERRY PRATCHETT

The trouble with having an open mind, of course, is that people will insist on coming along and tryi...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Whenever I feel the need to exercise, I lie down until it goes away.
PAUL TERRY

Do you think it's possible for an entire nation to be insane?
TERRY PRATCHETT

Did I do anything last night that suggested I was sane?
TERRY PRATCHETT

It would seem that you have no useful skill or talent whatsoever," he said. "Have you thought of goi...
TERRY PRATCHETT

If complete and utter chaos was lightning, then he'd be the sort to stand on a hilltop in a thunders...
TERRY PRATCHETT

In the beginning there was nothing, which exploded.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Time is a drug. Too much of it kills you.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Have you ever noticed how ‘What the hell’ is always the right decision to make?
TERRY JOHNSON

Charity, if you have the means, is a personal choice, but charity which is expected or compelled is ...
TERRY GOODKIND

Few religions are definite about the size of Heaven, but on the planet Earth the Book of Revelation ...
TERRY PRATCHETT

It's a terrible thing for a man when his woman gangs up on him wi' a toad
TERRY PRATCHETT

God does not play dice with the universe; He plays an ineffable game of His own devising, which migh...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it f...
TERRY PRATCHETT

All right," said Susan. "I'm not stupid. You're saying humans need... fantasies to make life ...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Grinning like a necrophiliac in a morgue.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Getting an education was a bit like a communicable sexual disease. It made you unsuitable for a lot ...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Historical determinism is a recipe for political quietism.
TERRY EAGLETON

After all, if you do not resist the apparently inevitable, you will never know how inevitable the in...
TERRY EAGLETON

HUMAN BEINGS MAKE LIFE SO INTERESTING. DO YOU KNOW, THAT IN A UNIVERSE SO FULL OF WONDERS, THEY HAVE...
TERRY PRATCHETT

There are times in life when people must know when not to let go. Balloons are designed to teach sma...
TERRY PRATCHETT

The female mind is certainly a devious one, my lord."
Vetinari looked at his secretary in surp...
TERRY PRATCHETT

[And there was the matter of Dick Turpin. It looked like the same car, except that forever afterward...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Stories of imagination tend to upset those without one.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Noble dragons don't have friends. The nearest they can get to the idea is an enemy who is still aliv...
TERRY PRATCHETT

You can't map a sense of humor. Anyway, what is a fantasy map but a space beyond which There Be Drag...
TERRY PRATCHETT

A European says: I can't understand this, what's wrong with me? An American says: I can't understand...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Whatever happens, they say afterwards, it must have been fate. People are always a little confused a...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Witches are naturally nosy,” said Miss Tick, standing up. “Well, I must go. I hope we shall meet...
TERRY PRATCHETT

I'll be more enthusiastic about encouraging thinking outside the box when there's evidence of any th...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Scientists have calculated that the chances of something so patently absurd actually existing are mi...
TERRY PRATCHETT

It's still magic even if you know how it's done.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Why do you go away? So that you can come back. So that you can see the place you came from with new ...
TERRY PRATCHETT

If you do not know where you come from, then you don't know where you are, and if you don't know whe...
TERRY PRATCHETT

We may pretend that we're basically moral people who make mistakes, but the whole of history proves ...
TERRY HANDS

I don't think we can ignore the Modern Movement. But I wouldn't have minded at all if it hadn't happ...
QUINLAN TERRY

The incredible thing about the human mind is that is didn't come with an instruction book.
TERRY RILEY

It is silly to call fat people gravitationally challenged -- a self-righteous fetishism of language ...
TERRY EAGLETON

Most of the great triumphs and tragedies of history are caused not by people being fundamentally goo...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Imagination, industry, and intelligence -- the three I s -- are all indispensable to the actress, bu...
ELLEN TERRY

There are, it has been said, two types of people in the world. There are those who, when presented w...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Literature transforms and intensifies ordinary language, deviates systematically from everyday speec...
TERRY EAGLETON

Experience is what keeps a man who makes the same mistake twice from admitting it the third time aro...
TERRY MCCORMICK

Sometimes the gods have no taste at all. They allow sunrises and sunsets in ridiculous pink and blue...
TERRY PRATCHETT

All propaganda or popularization involves a putting of the complex into the simple, but such a move ...
TERRY EAGLETON

People are capable of doing an awful lot when they have no choice and I had no choice. Courage is wh...
TERRY ANDERSON

The terrible thing about terrorism is that ultimately it destroys those who practice it. Slowly but ...
TERRY WAITE

What persuades men and women to mistake each other from time to time for gods or vermin is ideology....
TERRY EAGLETON

Postmodernism is among other things a sick joke at the expense of revolutionary avant-gardism.
TERRY EAGLETON

When you've got something to prove, there's nothing greater than a challenge.
TERRY BRADSHAW

In sport, mental imagery is used primarily to help you get the best out of yourself in training and ...
TERRY ORLICK

Readers are less and less seen as mere non-writers, the subhuman other or flawed derivative of the a...
TERRY EAGLETON

What's the worst thing that can happen to a quarterback? He loses his confidence.
TERRY BRADSHAW

A mistake is a Buddhist gift. Director Terry Gilliam to Robin Williams.
TERRY GILLIAM

I meant, said Ipslore bitterly, what is there in this world that truly makes living worth while? Dea...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Conceit is an insuperable obstacle to all progress.
ELLEN TERRY

Only in our dreams are we free. The rest of the time we need wages.
TERRY PRATCHETT

It's not enough to be able to pick up a sword. You have to know which end to poke into the enemy.
TERRY PRATCHETT

The important thing in writing is the capacity to astonish. Not shock - shock is a worn-out word - b...
TERRY SOUTHERN

’I'd have you lot up in front of the University authorities first thing in the morning, if it wasn...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Taxation is just a sophisticated way of demanding money with menaces
TERRY PRATCHETT

It's lies. It's all lies. Some of them are just prettier than others, that's all. People see what th...
TERRY PRATCHETT

One of the universal rules of happiness is: always be wary of any helpful item that weighs less than...
TERRY PRATCHETT

It's not worth doing something unless someone, somewhere, would much rather you weren't doing it.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Wisdom comes from experience. Experience is often a result of lack of wisdom.
TERRY PRATCHETT

This book had two authors, and they were both the same person.
TERRY PRATCHETT

If you don't know when to be a human being, you don't know when to be a witch.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Knowing things is magical, if other people don't know them.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Even if it's not your fault, it's your responsibility.
TERRY PRATCHETT

...inside every old person is a young person wondering what happened.
TERRY PRATCHETT

We who think we are about to die will laugh at anything.
TERRY PRATCHETT

His philosophy was a mixture of three famous schools -- the Cynics, the Stoics and the Epicureans --...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving.
TERRY PRATCHETT

Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
TERRY PRATCHETT

DON'T THINK OF IT AS DYING, said Death. JUST THINK OF IT AS LEAVING EARLY TO AVOID THE RUSH.
TERRY PRATCHETT

It is said that your life flashes before your eyes just before you die. That is true, it's called Li...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Some humans would do anything to see if it was possible to do it. If you put a large switch in some ...
TERRY PRATCHETT

Give a man a fire and he's warm for a day, but set fire to him and he's warm for the rest of his lif...
TERRY PRATCHETT

As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it.

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Terry Teachout

As late as the early '50s, jazz was still, for the most part, a genuinely popular music, a utilitarian, song-based idiom to which ordinary people could dance if they felt like it.

Terry Teachout

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