the calling of the teacher. There is no craft more privileged. To awaken in another human being powers, dreams beyond oneโs own; to induce in others a love for that which one loves; to make of oneโs inward present their future; that is a threefold adventure like no other.
George SteinerEvery language is a world. Without translation, we would inhabit parishes bordering on silence.
George SteinerThe notion of travelling to far places in order to study alien peoples and cultures, is unique to Western man; it springs from the predatory genius of the Greeks; no primitive peoples have ever come to study us. This is, on the one hand, a disinterested, intellectually inspired impulse. It is one of our glories. But it is, on the other, part and parcel of exploitation. [] The Western obsession with inquiry, with analysis, with the classification of all living forms, is itself a mode of subjugation, of psychological and technical mastery.
George SteinerBookishness, highest literacy, every technique of cultural propaganda and training not only can accompany bestiality and oppression and despotism but at certain points foster it.
George Steiner