Allan Bloom
Allan Bloom
Allan David Bloomwas an American philosopher, classicist, and academician. He studied under David Grene, Leo Strauss, Richard McKeon, and Alexandre Kojève. He subsequently taught at Cornell University, the University of Toronto, Yale University, École Normale Supérieure of Paris, and the University of Chicago. Bloom championed the idea of Great Books education and became famous for his criticism of contemporary American higher education, with his views being expressed in his bestselling 1987 book, The Closing of the American Mind. Characterized as...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhilosopher
Date of Birth14 September 1930
CountryUnited States of America
As soon as tradition has come to be recognized as tradition, it is dead.
There is one thing a professor can be absolutely certain of: almost every student entering the university believes, or says he believes, that truth is relative.
Every age is blind to its own worst madness.
Law may prescribe that the male nipples be made equal to the female ones, but they still will not give milk.
The failure to read good books both enfeebles the vision and strengthens our most fatal tendency - the belief that the here and now is all there is.
The liberally educated person is one who is able to resist the easy and preferred answers, not because he is obstinate but because he knows others worthy of consideration.
To recognize that some of the things our culture believes are not true imposes on us the duty of finding out which are true and which are not.
Sycophancy toward those who hold power is a fact in every regime, and especially in a democracy, where, unlike tyranny, there is an accepted principle of legitimacy that breaks the inner will to resist.... Flattery of the people and incapacity to resist public opinion are the democratic vices, particularly among writers, artists, journalists and anyone else who is dependent on an audience.
Reason cannot establish values, and its belief that it can is the stupidiest and most pernicious illusion.
The most successful tyranny is not the one that uses force to assure uniformity but the one that removes the awareness of other possibilities, that makes it seem inconceivable that other ways are viable, that removes the sense that there is an outside.
Once the law is broken with impunity, each man regains the right to any means he deems proper or necessary in order to defend himself against the new tyrant, the one who can break the law.
The artist is the most interesting of all phenomena, for he represents creativity, the definition of man.
Education is the movement from darkness to light.