Education Quote by Harri Holkeri

Holkeri’s line carries the weary realism of a career politician who’s seen how tiny most “global” gestures look from the balcony of power. It refuses the intoxicating fantasy that one person can singlehandedly bend history, yet it also refuses the convenient alibi of helplessness. The first clause concedes scale: institutions, markets, and geopolitics dwarf individual action. The pivot is the moral trapdoor: if the individual is small, the individual is also where responsibility can’t be outsourced.

“Living as we are teaching” is the tell. This isn’t just about private virtue; it’s about legitimacy. Holkeri is pointing at the credibility crisis that haunts public life: leaders preach austerity while living lavishly, demand trust while gaming rules, promote sustainability while flying endlessly. In that ecosystem, hypocrisy isn’t a character flaw, it’s a policy solvent. People stop believing not only the messenger, but the message itself.

As a Finnish statesman and later a UN figure, Holkeri spoke from a political culture that prizes practical integrity over grandstanding. The sentence fits the post-Cold War, early-globalization mood: problems were increasingly transnational (conflict, climate, inequality), while citizens felt increasingly disconnected from levers of change. His answer is not romantic; it’s procedural. Start where you can verify your own behavior, because example is the one form of persuasion that survives polarization. The subtext is blunt: if your life contradicts your ideals, you’re not educating anyone - you’re advertising cynicism.