To shoot a man because one disagrees with his interpretation of Darwin or Hegel is a sinister tribute to the supremacy of ideas in human affairs -- but a tribute nevertheless.
George SteinerMy father loved poetry and music. But deep in himself he thought teaching the finest thing a person could do.
George Steinerthe 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 SteinerThe capacity for imaginative reflex, for moral risk in any human being is not limitless; on the contrary, it can be rapidly absorbed by fictions, and thus the cry in the poem may come to sound louder, more urgent, more real than the cry in the street outside. The death in the novel may move us more potently than the death in the next room. Thus there may be a covert, betraying link between the cultivation of aesthetic response and the potential of personal inhumanity.
George Steiner