"I realized early on that the academy and the literary world alike — and I don't think there really is a distinction between the two — are always dominated by fools, knaves, charlatans and bureaucrats."

Harold Bloom Literature See all quotes by Harold Bloom →

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More by Harold Bloom

“Hamlet, Kiekegaard, Kafka are ironists in the wake of Jesus. All Western irony is a repetition of Jesus' enigmas/riddles, in amalgam with the ironies of Socrates.”

“Shelley, who in Prometheus Unbound had observed that the wise lack love and those who have love lack wisdom, went to his end in The Triumph of Life asking why good and the means of good were irreconcilable.”

“Lucretius and his tradition taught Shelley that freedom came from understanding causation.”

“The outward limit of human achievement.”

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