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George Steiner

George Steiner Quotes

Literary critic

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Famous George Steiner Quotes

“There would be no history as we know it, no religion, no metaphysics or aesthetics as we have lived them, without an initial act of trust, of confiding, more fundamental, more axiomatic by far than any “social contract” or covenant with the postulate of the divine. This instauration of trust, this entrance of man into the city of man, is that between word and world.”

KnowsMenWorldWould BeSocialCitiesDivineFundamentalsContractsMetaphysicsInitialsAestheticsCovenantEntrancesSocial ContractConfiding
Book:Real Presences
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“It is not the literal past that rules us, save, possibly, in a biological sense. It is images of the past. Each new historical era mirrors itself in the picture and active mythology of its past or of a past borrowed from other cultures. It tests its sense of identity, of regress or new achievement against that past.”

PastCultureIdentityAchievementTestsMirrorsHistoricalActiveMythologyErasLiteralBorrowedOther Cultures
Book:In Bluebeard's Castle: Some Notes Towards the Redefinition of Culture
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“The new sound-sphere is global. It ripples at great speed across languages, ideologies, frontiers and races. The economics of this musical Esperanto is staggering. Rock and pop breed concentric worlds of fashion, setting and life-style. Popular music has brought with it sociologies of private and public manner, of group solidarity. The politics of Eden come loud.”

WorldLifeLanguageSoundRaceMusicGroupsRocksFashionStyleEconomicsMusicalPopsSpeedSettingSettingsIdeologyLoudSpheresSolidaritySociologyFrontiersEdenRippleStaggeringPopular MusicLife StyleMusical LifeEsperanto
Author:George Steiner
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“The 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.”

HumansMayRealMovingNextSoundHuman BeingsRoomsFictionMoralNovelRiskStreetsCryCapacityResponseContraryLinksAestheticBetrayImaginativeUrgentLimitlessCultivationInhumanityReflexesCovert
Book:George Steiner: A Reader
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“The 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.”

MenHandsFormOrderCultureStudyGeniusUniqueSpringGloryWesternInspiredNotionObsessionPsychologicalAliensImpulseAnalysisGreekMasteryPrimitiveExploitationInquiryClassificationDisinterestedParcelPredatorySubjugation
Author:George Steiner
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“He is no true reader who has not experienced the reproachful fascination of the great shelves of unread books, of the libraries at night of which Borges is the fabulist. He is no reader who has not heard, in his inward ear, the call of the hundreds of thousands, of the millions of volumes which stand in the stacks of the British Library asking to be read. For there is in each book a gamble against oblivion, a wager against silence, which can be won only when the book is opened again (but in contrast to man, the book can wait centuries for the hazard of resurrection.)”

MenBookNightWaitingSilenceMillionsHeardCenturyReaderEarsAskingLibraryBritishResurrectionContrastVolumeInwardShelvesOblivionFascinationGambleHazardsBorgesWagersUnread Books
Author:George Steiner
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“Nothing is more symptomatic of the enervation, of the decompression of the Western imagination, than our incapacity to respond to the landings on the Moon. Not a single great poem, picture, metaphor has come of this breathtaking act, of Prometheus' rescue of Icarus or of Phaeton in flight towards the stars.”

StarsImaginationMoonWesternMetaphorFlightExplorationRescueApolloSpace ExplorationLandingStar GazingBreathtakingIncapacityIcarusPrometheus
Author:George Steiner
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