We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Only when the true ends of society have nothing to do with the sublime does "culture" become necessary as a veneer to… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand. — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
“As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead, something to which lip service is paid in… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Culture as art is the peak expression of man's creativity, his capacity to break out of nature's narrow bounds, and hence out… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
To recognize that some of the things our culture believes are not true imposes on us the duty of finding out which… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead. — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
This nation's impulse is toward the future, and tradition seems more of a shackle to it than an inspiration. — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
The distinction between the world of commerce and that of "culture" quickly became the distinction between infrastructure and superstructure, with the former… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Authentic values are those by which a life can be lived, which can form a people that produces great deeds and thoughts. — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Shakespeare's naturalness is attested to by the strange fact that he is the only classical author who remains popular. The critical termites are massed… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
The utilitarian behaves sensibly in all that is required for preservation but never takes account of the fact that he must die...His whole life… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Human nature must not be altered in order to have a problem-free world. Man is not just a problem-solving being, as behaviorists would wish… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Never did I think that the university was properly ministerial to the society around it. Rather I thought and think that society is ministerial… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidiest and most pernicious illusion. — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Fathers and mothers have lost the idea that the highest aspiration they might have for their children is for them to be wise... specialized… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
As Western nations became more prosperous, leisure, which had been put off for several centuries in favor of the pursuit of property, the means… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
Historicism and cultural relativism actually are a means to avoid testing our own prejudices and asking, for example, whether men are really equal or… — Allan Bloom Copy Share Image
