"From all these roles, uses, arguments, and justifications one large and undisputed truth emerges: art is power. It influences the mind, the nerves, the feelings, the soul. It carries messages of hope, hostility, derision, and moral rebuke. It can fight material and spiritual evils, and transmit the ideals of a community now living, long past, or soon to be born. In a word, Art is deemed universally important because it helps men to live and to remember.

But in saying that these are truths, we are saying also that Art is dangerous. It is dangerous, first, because all powerful things can be dangerous; and it is dangerous also because while we tend to venerate art as one great and good thing, its various uses are most often antagonistic: art can dignify and exalt the civilization that gives it birth and also weaken.and destroy it. Art can serve the Revolution or can detach an individual from the struggles of his age, making loyal citizenship appear to him as futile and perverse as revolutionary action."

- pg. 21 "Why Art must be Challenged", from "The Use and Abuse of Art", The A. W. Mellon Lectures in the Fine Arts - 1973, The National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., Bollingen Series XXV - 22, Princeton University Press 1974

Jacques Barzun