quote
The great majority of students, although they as much as anyone want to think well of themselves, are aware that they are busy with their own careers and relationships. There is a certain rhetoric of self-fulfillment that gives a patina of glamor to this life, but they can see that there is nothing particularly noble about it. Survivalism has taken the place of heroism as the admired quality.
— Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind, p. 84.