Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Allan Bloom
Age: 62 †
Born: 1930
Born: September 14
Died: 1992
Died: October 7
Classical Scholar
Journalist
Philosopher
Political Scientist
Indianapolis
Indiana
Allan David Bloom
Way
Socrates
Things
Obliged
Life
Recognition
Consequence
Seek
Knowledge
Nature
Important

More quotes by Allan Bloom

Image
This nation's impulse is toward the future, and tradition seems more of a shackle to it than an inspiration.
Allan Bloom
Image
Most of all I admire Mozart's capacity to be both deep and rational, a combination often said to be impossible.
Allan Bloom
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 competence and success are all that they can imagine.
Allan Bloom
Image
It was not necessarily the best of times in America when Catholics and Protestants were suspicious of and hated one another but at least they were taking their beliefs seriously, and the more or less satisfactory accommodations they worked out were not simply the result of apathy about the state of their souls.
Allan Bloom
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 to leisure, finally began to be of primary concern. But, in the meantime, any notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared.
Allan Bloom
Image
The importance of these [college] years for an American cannot be overestimated. They are civilization's only chance to get to him.
Allan Bloom
Image
University convention submerges nature. It issues licenses, and hunting without one is forbidden.
Allan Bloom
Image
The self is the modern substitute for the soul.
Allan Bloom
Image
Education in our times must try to find whatever there is in students that might yearn for completion, and to reconstruct the learning that would enable them autonomously to seek that completion.
Allan Bloom
Image
These sociologists who talk to facilely about the sacred are like a man who keeps a toothless old circus lion around the house in order to experience the thrills of the jungle.
Allan Bloom
Image
We need history, not to tell us what happened or to explain the past, but to make the past alive so that it can explain us and make a future possible.
Allan Bloom
Image
Error is indeed our enemy, but it alone points to the truth and therefore deserves our respectful treatment.
Allan Bloom
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
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 to the university, and I bless a society that tolerates and supports an eternal childhood for some, a childhood whose playfulness can in turn be a blessing to society.
Allan Bloom
Image
Intellectuals advertise their superiority to political practice but are absolutely in its thrall. It is no accident that Marxist theory and practice use the intellectuals as tools and keep them in brutal subservience.
Allan Bloom
Image
Only Socrates knew, after a lifetime of unceasing labor, that he was ignorant. Now every high-school student knows that. How did it become so easy?
Allan Bloom
Image
The distinction between the world of commerce and that of culture quickly became the distinction between infrastructure and superstructure, with the former clearly determining the latter.
Allan Bloom
Image
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.
Allan Bloom
Image
[A]ny notion of the serious life of leisure, as well as men's taste and capacity to live it, had disappeared. Leisure became entertainment.
Allan Bloom
Image
A serious life means being fully aware of the alternatives, thinking about them with all the intensity one brings to bear on life-and-death questions, in full recognition that every choice is a great risk with necessary consequences that are hard to bear.
Allan Bloom