Allan Bloom - True Quotes

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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

As to the viciousness of the philosophers, the meaning of this complaint is succinctly expressed in the charge that the philosophers do not hold the gods the city holds. And this accusation is most true. The quest for wisdom begins in doubt of the conventional wisdom about the highest things. The most cherished beliefs of the community, the collective hopes and fears, are centered on its gods. The unpardonable thing is to be beyond these hopes and fears, beyond the awe and shame the gods impose.

Allan Bloom

Only when the true ends of society have nothing to do with the sublime does culture become necessary as a veneer to cover over the void. Culture can at best appreciate the monuments of earlier faith; it cannot produce them.

Allan Bloom