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A good deal of classical music is, today, the opium of the good citizen.

— George Steiner In Bluebeard's Castle (1971)

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More quotes by George Steiner

Compared to Homeric or even to medieval times, modern man inhabits the physical world like a rapacious stranger.

Marxism and the Literary Critic (1967)

Nothing in a language is less translatable than its modes of understatement.

The Death of Tragedy (1961)

Words that are saturated with lies or atrocity do not easily resume life.

Language and Silence: Essays 1958-1966 (1967)

For many human beings, religion has been the music which they believe in.

Real Presences (1989)

The journalistic vision sharpens to the point of maximum impact every event, every individual and social configuration; but the honing is uniform.

Real Presences (1989)

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The emphasis of study upon a particular aspect of music is in itself ideological because it contains implications about the music's value.

Lucy Green

Music is well said to be the speech of angels.

Thomas Carlyle Critical and Miscellaneous Essays (1827)

Music has no subject beyond the combinations of notes we hear, for music speaks not only by means of sounds, it speaks nothing but sound.

Eduard Hanslick

Above the pitch, out of tune, and off the hinges.

François Rabelais Gargantua and Pantagruel (1532)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: George Steiner (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.