Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor;… — 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
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
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
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
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
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
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
Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidiest and most pernicious illusion. — Allan Bloom Copy Share
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
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
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
“Man requires a healing education which returns him to himself. Rousseau's paradoxes- his attack on the arts and the sciences and his practice of… — Allan Bloom Copy Share
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now… — Allan Bloom Copy Share
Life, liberty, and the pursuit of property were just what Aristotle did not talk about. They are the conditions of happiness; but the essence… — Allan Bloom Copy Share
