Socrates' way of life is the consequence of his recognition that we can know what it is that we do not know about the most important things and that we are by nature obliged to seek that knowledge. — 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 is absorbed in avoiding death, which is inevitable, and therefore he might be thought to be the most irrational of men, if rationality has anything to do with understanding ends or comprehending the human situation as… — 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 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
