George Steiner Quotes

A work of art has no importance whatever to society. It is only important to the individual.

The word "art" does not designate the concept of a mere eventuality; it is a concept of rank.

I don't believe in very many things, but art is definitely one of them. And at the top of that list, film and art influence our world's culture much more than many of us understand and fully respect.

Is the Mona Lisa an 'accurate' representation of the actual human model for the painting? Who knows? Who cares? It's a great piece of art. It moves us. It makes us wonder, makes us gape - finally makes us look inward at ourselves.

The importance of the arts to the societies in which they thrive is well documented.

Every great work of art has two faces, one toward its own time and one toward the future, toward eternity.

We believed that there's no such thing as good art or bad art. Art is art. If it's bad, it's something else. It was a much, much harder line in the '50s and '60s than it is now, because the idea of art education didn't exist - they didn't have a fine arts program when I was a kid.

Of what use were the arts if they were only the reproduction and the imitation of life?

With a movie you're creating from the beginning this particular work, let's not call it work of art, because very few movies are works of art, let's just call them bits of popular culture, whatever they are, sometimes very rarely by accident a movie becomes a work of art.

Imagine if all those kings and dukes hadn't commissioned those crazy cathedrals, paintings and music... we'd still be living in sticks and mud. Because none of those things made any economic sense. Human beings' capacity to 'waste time' is a miracle - but that's exactly what art is for.

Creativity and artistic endeavors have a mission that goes far beyond just making music for the sake of music.

To do art, one thing should always remember - subjects of people in misery have deep meanings.

I think art is not an ornament or refinement at the fringes of human intelligence, I think it's at the center. It's at the core.

I don't think it's an unnatural thing at all for my collaborations or projects to be seen as art but entertainment at the same time.

Once people write criticism about something - and even in 1967 I was far from alone - they're assuming it's art, and art is supposed to last.

The value of the arts cannot be measured by its ability to preserve life but rather to enhance existence.

If gaming were seen as an art, the important question would be not whether games are good for us but whether they are good, full stop.

Great art always transcends its culture, while lesser art merely reflects it.

I still hope that more people can create art, even though artistic genres may never be the most popular or money-making genres. But the thing is, I think art is more long-lasting. It stays in people, and it changes them.

The life of the arts is far from an interruption, a distraction, in the life of a nation, is close to the center of a nation's purpose-and is a test of the quality of a nations' civilization.

The final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.

Art is not a pleasure, a solace, or an amusement; art is great matter.

Art has a smaller audience than, say, movies or other forms of mass consumption. But that doesn't mean the work doesn't have an impact in a way that transcends just a few cultural arbiters.

Art cannot be separated from life. It is the expression of the greatest need of which life is capable, and we value art not because of the skilled product, but because of its revelation of a life's experience.

More important than a work of art itself is what it will sow. Art can die, a painting can disappear. What counts is the seed.