Classical music is a special taste like Greek language or pre-Columbian archeology, not a common culture of reciprocal communication and psychological shorthand.
Allan BloomRead
The humanities are like the great old Paris Flea Market where, amidst masses of junk, people with a good eye found cast away treasures...They are like a refugee camp where all the geniuses driven out of their jobs and countries by unfriendly regimes are idling.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The humanities encompass valuable insights and creativity, often overlooked in a chaotic world.
Allan Bloom's quote suggests that the humanities, much like a flea market filled with discarded items, contain hidden treasures of knowledge and beauty that require discernment to uncover. He also likens the humanities to a refugee camp, highlighting how they shelter and preserve the thoughts of brilliant minds that have been marginalized or oppressed by society, emphasizing their ongoing importance in understanding culture and humanity.
Themes
HumanitiesEducationCreativityKnowledgeCulture
In practice
Example use cases
During an academic lecture, this quote can be utilized to emphasize the importance of the humanities in education.
More from Allan Bloom
All quotes →Our Nation, a great stage for the acting out of great thoughts, presents the classic confrontation between Locke's views of the state of nature and Rousseau's criticism of them... Nature is raw material, worthless without the mixture of human labor; yet nature is also the highest and most sacred thing. The same people who struggle to save the snail-darter bless the pill, worry about hunting deer and defend abortion. Reverence for nature, mastery of nature- whichever is convenient.
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Reason transformed into prejudice is the worst form of prejudice, because reason is the only instrument for liberation from prejudice.
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There is no real education that does not respond to felt need; anything else acquired is trifling display.
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Students now arrive at the university ignorant and cynical about our political heritage, lacking the wherewithal to be either inspired by it or seriously critical of it.
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We are like ignorant shepherds living on a site where great civilizations once flourished. The shepherds play with the fragments that pop up to the surface, having no notion of the beautiful structures of which they were once a part.
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