“Every educational system has a moral goal that it tries to attain and that informs its curriculum. It wants to produce a certain kind of human being.” – Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
“Thus, 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.” (p. 64) – Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
“Persons deeply committed to values are admired. Their intense belief, their caring or concern, their believing in something, is the proof of autonomy, freedom, and creativity. Such persons are the contrary of easygoing, and they have standards all the more worthy because they are not received from tradition, and are not based on a reality all can see, or derived from thin rationalizing confined to calculation about material interests.” (p. 142) – Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind
