There is no real teacher who in practice does not believe in the existence of the soul, or in a magic that acts on it through speech. – Allan Bloom
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
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
Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice. – Allan Bloom
The second, and I think this is the much more overt and I think it is the main cause, I have been increasingly demonstrating or trying to demonstrate that every possible stance a critic, a scholar, a teacher can take towards a poem is itself inevitably and necessarily poetic. – Harold Bloom