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
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
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. – Allan Bloom
The real community of man, in the midst of all the self-contraditory simulacra of community, is the community of those who seek the truth, of potential knowers… of all men to the extent that they know. – Allan Bloom
It is against stupidity in every shape and form that we have to wage our eternal battle. But how can we wonder at the want of sense on the part of those who have had no advantages, when we see such plentiful absence of that commodity on the part of those who have had all the advantages? – William Booth