Leo Strauss Quotes

The clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas. ~ Leo Strauss

There is a remarkable sentence of Pascal according to which we know too little to be dogmatists and too much to be skeptics, which expresses beautifully what Plato conveys through his dialogues. ~ Leo Strauss

All human thought, including scientific thought, rests on premises which cannot be validated by human reason and which came from historical epoch to historical epoch. ~ Leo Strauss

History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps by only the most vocal men; it does not teach us whether the change was sound or whether the rejected view deserved to be rejected. Only an impartial analysis of the view in question, an analysis that is not dazzled by the victory or stunned by the defeat of the adherents of the view concerned could teach us anything regarding the worth of the view and hence regarding the meaning of the historical change. ~ Leo Strauss

Philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems, i.e., of the fundamental and comprehensive problems. It is impossible to think about these problems without becoming inclined toward a solution, toward one or the other of the very few typical solutions. Yet as long as there is no wisdom but only quest for wisdom, the evidence of all solutions is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems. Therefore the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the 'subjective certainty' [quoting M. Alexandre Kojève] of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that solution. At that moment the sectarian is born. The danger of succumbing to the attraction of solutions is essential to philosophy which, without incurring this danger, would degenerate into playing with the problems. But the philosopher does not necessarily succumb to this danger, as is shown by Socrates, who never belonged to a sect and never founded one. And even if the philosophic friends are compelled to be members of a sect or to found one, they are not necessarily members of one and the same sect: Amicus Plato. ~ Leo Strauss

The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption. ~ Leo Strauss

Nietzsche was not an Existentialist. Existentialism emerged out of the conflict between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, the Danish religious writer. ~ Leo Strauss

Passionately yes, passionately no" is the worst of all tastes. And now after one has overcome that, after one has followed this natural inclination, one must learn to put some art into one's feelings and rather make an experiment with the artificial as distinguished from and opposed to the natural. That is what the true artists of life do. They do not follow the natural impulses, but experiment with the artificial. ~ Leo Strauss

Socrates then turns to the communism regarding women and children and shows that it is desirable because it will make the city more "one," and hence more perfect, than a city consisting of separate families would be: the city should be as similar as possible to a single human being or to a single living body, i.e., to a natural being. At this point we understand somewhat better why Socrates started his discussion of justice by assuming an important parallelism between the city and the individual: he was thinking ahead of the greatest possible unity of the city. ~ Leo Strauss

I cannot know anything of which there is and can be only one. ~ Leo Strauss

All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change for the worse; when desiring to change, we wish to bring about something better. All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse. ~ Leo Strauss

The emancipation of the scholars and scientists from philosophy is according to [Nietzsche] only a part of the democratic movement, i.e. of the emancipation of the low from subordination to the high ... The plebeian character of the contemporary scholar or scientist is due to the fact that he has no reverence for himself. ~ Leo Strauss

It is not self-forgetting and pain-loving antiquarianism nor self-forgetting and intoxicating romanticism which induces us to turn with passionate interest, with unqualified willingness to learn, toward the political thought of classical antiquity. We are impelled to do so by the crisis of our time, the crisis of the West. ~ Leo Strauss

It is true that the successful quest for wisdom might lead to the result that wisdom is not the one thing needful. But this result would owe its relevance to the fact that it is the result of the quest for wisdom: the very disavowal of reason must be reasonable disavowal. ~ Leo Strauss

God's reasons for communicating with man must be subsumed under his reason for communicating to him his account of his creation of the world - and man. ~ Leo Strauss

But what is the core of the political? Men killing men on the largest scale in broad daylight and with the greatest serenity. ~ Leo Strauss

The Truth about Leo Strauss is the most balanced and insightful book yet written about Strauss's thought, students, and political influence. It dispels myths promulgated by both friends and foes and persuasively traces the conflicting paths that American thinkers indebted to Strauss have taken. ~ William Galston

The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of view, I say, "political philosophy" means primarily not the philosophic study of politics, but the political, or popular, treatment of philosophy, or the political introduction to philosophy the attempt to lead qualified citizens, or rather their qualified sons, from the political life to the philosophic life. ~ Leo Strauss

Philosophizing means, then, to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge. ~ Leo Strauss

Life is the joyless quest for joy. ~ Leo Strauss

Liberal education reminds those members of a mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness. ~ Leo Strauss

The belief that value judgments are not subject, in the last analysis, to rational control, encourages the inclination to make irresponsible assertions regarding right and wrong or good and bad. One evades discussion of serious issues by the simple device of passing them off as value problems, whereas, to say the least, many of these conflicts arose out of man's very agreement regarding values. ~ Leo Strauss

Liberal education is liberation from vulgarity. The Greeks had a beautiful word for "vulgarity"; they called it apeirokalia, lack of experience in things beautiful. Liberal education supplies us with experience in things beautiful. ~ Leo Strauss

The silence of a wise man is always meaningful. ~ Leo Strauss

By becoming aware of the dignity of the mind, we realize the true ground of the dignity of man and therewith the goodness of the world, whither we understand it as created or uncreated, which is the home of man because it is the home of the human mind. ~ Leo Strauss

It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is. ~ Leo Strauss

Every human being and every society is what it is by virtue of the highest to which it looks up. The city, if it is healthy, looks up, not to the laws which it can unmake as it made them, but to the unwritten laws, the divine law, the gods of the city. The city must transcend itself. ...the most important consideration concerns that which transcends the city or which is higher than the city; it does not concern things which are simply subordinate to the city. ~ Leo Strauss

Our understanding of the thought of the past is liable to be the more adequate, the less the historian is convinced of the superiority of his own point of view, or the more he is prepared to admit the possibility that he may have to learn something, not merely about the thinkers of the past, but from them. ~ Leo Strauss

Nihilism is the rejection of the principles of civilisation as such ... I said civilisation, and not: culture. For I have noticed that many nihilists are great lovers of culture, as distinguished from, and opposed to, civilisation. Besides, the term culture leaves it undetermined what the thing is which is to be cultivated (blood and soil or the mind), whereas the term civilisation designates at once the process of making man a citizen, and not a slave; an inhabitant of cities, and not a rustic; a lover of peace, and not of war; a polite being, and not a ruffian. ~ Leo Strauss

The most superficial fact regarding the Discourses , the fact that the number of its chapters equals the number of books of Livy 's History , compelled us to start a chain of tentative reasoning which brings us suddenly face to face with the only New Testament quotation that ever appears in Machiavelli 's two books and with an enormous blasphemy. ~ Leo Strauss

A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar. ~ Leo Strauss

For try as one may to expel nature with a hayfork, it will always come back. ~ Leo Strauss

If God is One, and if there can be no other God, there can be no idea of God. ~ Leo Strauss

According to our social science, we can be or become wise in all matters of secondary importance, but we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect: we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices, i.e. regarding their soundness or unsoundness ... We are then in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues. ~ Leo Strauss

So what Nietzsche says here is this: the better among the contemporary atheists, with whom Nietzsche is to some extent in agreement, will come to know what they are doing. They do not know it now. Now they are perfectly self–satisfied and think that they are free thinkers. They will come to realize that there is something infinitely more terrible, depressing, and degrading than religion or theism. [...] You have no idea what you are letting yourselves in for. The utter senselessness, the irrelevance of man which is implied in that atheism and you fools don't see it. ~ Leo Strauss

Education, they [philosophers] felt, is the only answer to the always pressing question, to the political question par excellence, of how to reconcile order which is not oppression with freedom which is not license. ~ Leo Strauss

One cannot refute what one has not thoroughly understood. ~ Leo Strauss

Life is too short to live with any but the greatest books. ~ Leo Strauss

The present Anglo-German war is then of symbolic significance. In defending modern civilisation against German nihilism, the English are defending the eternal principles of civilisation. ~ Leo Strauss

The Prussian state is, for Hegel, the model most akin to the rational state because it represents, thanks both to the Protestant religion and the authority of the monarchy, a synthesis between the revolutionary exigencies of principles and the traditional exigencies of organization. ~ Leo Strauss

The proper work of a writing is truly to talk, or to reveal the truth, to some while leading others to salutary opinions; the proper work of a writing is to arouse to thinking those who are by nature fit for it; the good writing achieves its end if the reader considers carefully the 'logographic necessity' of every part, however small or seemingly insignificant, of the writing. ~ Leo Strauss

It is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments to be artists. ~ Leo Strauss

Existentialism is a 'movement' which like all such movements has a flabby periphery and a hard center. That center is the thought of Heidegger. ~ Leo Strauss

Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian, for Machiavelli's teaching was graceful, subtle, and colorful. Nor is it Neronian. Nevertheless one may say of it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns. ~ Leo Strauss

Men must always have distinguished (e.g. in judicial matters) between hearsay and seeing with one's own eyes and have preferred what one has seen to what he has merely heard from others. But the use of this distinction was originally limited to particular or subordinate matters. As regards the most weighty matters the first things and the right way the only source of knowledge was hearsay. ~ Leo Strauss

But the God of the Bible is not only One, but the only possible One. ~ Leo Strauss

Just as the banqueteers are drunk from wine, the citizens are drunk from fears, hopes, desires, and aversions and are therefore in need of being ruled by a man who is sober. ~ Leo Strauss

My knowledge of trains - and love before first sight, love at negative-one sight - comes from Alfred Hitchcock. ~ Darin Strauss

I have to stay concentrated. I have to maintain focus and concentration. I can't get ahead of myself. I give 100 percent in training and in the ring. I always want to put on a great fight for the fans. ~ Leo Santa Cruz

What do you want? What do you want?" he repeated to himself. "What do I want? To live and not to suffer," he answered. And again he listened with such concentrated attention that even his pain did not distract him. "To live? How?" asked his inner voice. "Why, to live as I used to - well and pleasantly." "As you lived before, well and pleasantly?" the voice repeated. And in imagination he began to recall the best moments of his pleasant life. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Listen, in dreams and especially in nightmares, from indigestion or anything, a man sees sometimes such artistic visions, such complex and real actuality, such events, even a whole world of events, woven into such a plot, with such unexpected details from the most exalted matters to the last button on a cuff, as I swear Leo Tolstoy has never invented. ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky

It happened so fast the driver didn't have a chance to flinch. Leo grabbed his head and wrenched, twisting it sharply until it crunched. As a man, Leo didn't look like much. Didn't look strong enough to break a man's neck. ~ Carrie Vaughn

Houston, I'd rather have the truth than this ring." "That ring is my promise to tell you the truth, but only when the time is right. ~ Cassia Leo

Love wasn't a thing you fell in, but rose to. It was what stopped you from falling. ~ Darin Strauss

Nine times out of ten, when you extend your arms to someone, they will step in, because basically they need precisely what you need. ~ Leo Buscaglia

But the more he strained to think, the clearer it became to him that it was undoubtedly so, that he had actually forgotten, overlooked in his life one small circumstance - that death would come and everything would end, that it was not worth starting anything and that nothing could possibly be done about it. Yes, it was terrible, but it was so. ~ Leo Tolstoy

All the cruellest words a coarse man could say, he said to her in her imagination, and she could not forgive him for them, as if he had actually said them to her. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Too much polishing and you spoil things. There's a limit to the expressibility of ideas. You have a new thought, an interesting one. Then, as you try to perfect it, it ceases to be new and interesting, and loses the freshness with which it first occurred to you. You're spoiling it. ~ Leo Tolstoy

What's green, hangs on a wall and whistles? ~ Leo Rosten

The very fact of the death of someone close to them aroused in all who heard about it, as always, a feeling of delight that he had died and they hadn't. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Anyway. Leo said, I hope you've got your worksheet, 'cause I used mine for spit wads days ago. Why are you looking at me like that? Somebody draw on my face again? ~ Rick Riordan

Speak to her now? But that's just why I'm afraid to speak - because I'm happy now, happy in hope, anyway ... . And then? ... . But I must! I must! I must! Away with weakness! ~ Leo Tolstoy

One of the disconcerting things about writing for publication is that you're trying to clear your little parcel of land in a field where Taste is king - and, as we all know, there's no accounting for Taste. ~ Darin Strauss

I think the motive force of all our action is, after all, personal happiness. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Like all those who live in touch with nature and have known want, he was patient and could wait for hours, even days without growing restless or irritable ~ Leo Tolstoy

I've lost my heart to you. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Out of all the vices, the most difficult is ingratitude. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Although Vasili Andreevich felt quite warm in his two fur coats, especially after struggling in the snow drift, a cold shiver ran down his back on realizing that he must really spend the night where they were. ~ Leo Tolstoy

Even if we accept, as the basic tenet of true democracy, that one moron is equal to one genius, is it necessary to go a further step and hold that two morons are better than one genius? ~ Leo Szilard

Pause. Breathe. Let all of that fade. ~ Leo Babauta

That only shows you have no heart,' she said. But her eyes said that she knew he had a heart, and that was why she was afraid of him ~ Leo Tolstoy

Three stages of truth for scientists:
(1) It's not true.
(2) If it is true, it's not very important.
(3) We knew it all along. ~ Leo Szilard

It was a warm, rainy, autumnal day. The wide expanse that opened out before the heights on which the Russian batteries stood guarding the bridge, was at times veiled by a diaphanous curtain of slanting rain, and then, suddenly spread out in the sunlight, far-distant objects could be clearly seen glittering as though freshly varnished. Down ~ Leo Tolstoy

One need only admit that public tranquillity is in danger and any action finds a justification. All ~ Leo Tolstoy

We decided. We said that we weren't telling anyone. We said it was for art's sake. We said the more people who knew, the more chance the cops'd pick us up. We said it was you and me, no crew."
"Are you sure I didn't say it was to score girls?"
That actually sounds a whole lot like something Leo woud say. ~ Cath Crowley

The countess in turn, without omitting her duties as hostess, threw significant glances from behind the pineapples at her husband whose face and bald head seemed by their redness to contrast more than usual with his gray hair. At ~ Leo Tolstoy

Among the numerous pleasures of Vienna the hotel evenings are famous. During supper Strauss or Lanner play waltzes ... After every waltz they get huge applause; and if they play a Quodlibet, or jumble of opera, song and dance, the hearers are so overjoyed that they don't know what to do with themselves. It shows the corrupt taste of the Viennese public. ~ Frederic Chopin

All the variety, all the charm, all the beauty of life is made up of light and shadow. ~ Leo Tolstoy

We got lots of secrets, Will. You Apollo guys can't have all the fun. Our campers have been excavating the tunnel system under Cabin Nine for almost a century. We still haven't found the end. Anyway, Leo, if you don't mind sleeping in a dead man's bed, it's yours-Jake
Suddenly Leo didn't feel like kicking back. He sat up, careful not to touch any of the buttons. The counselor who died-this was his bed-Leo
Yeah. Charles Beckendorf-Jake
Leo imagined saw blades coming through the mattress, or maybe a grenade sewn inside the pillows. He didn't, like, die IN this bed, did he-Leo
No. In the Titan War, last summer-Jake
The Titan War, which has NOTHING to do with this very fine bed-Leo
"The Titans," Will said, like Leo was an idiot. The big powerful guys that ruled the world before the gods. They tried to make a comeback last summer. Their leader, Kronos, built a new palace on top of Mount Tam in California. Their armies came to New York and almost destoyed Mount Olympus. A lot of demigods died trying to stop them-Will
I'm guessing this wasn't on the news-Leo
It seemed like a fair question, but Will shook his head in disbelief. You didn't hear about Mount St. Helens erupting, or the freak storms across the country, or that building collapsing in St Louis-Will
Leo shrugged. Last summer, he'd been on the run from another foster home. Then a truancy officer caught him in New Mexico, and the court sentenced him to the nearest correction fac ~ Rick Riordan

... to stop loving and, at the same time, fall in love means to love twice as strong than before. ~ Leo Tolstoy

I am very sorry you did not find me in yesterday. I was fussing about with Germans all day. We went with Weyrother to survey the dispositions. When Germans start being accurate there's no end to it! ~ Leo Tolstoy

Rainbows. Very Macho! ~Leo Valdez ~ Rick Riordan

That's it, come on! ~ Leo Tolstoy

God is in the midst, and each drop tries to expand so as to reflect Him to the greatest extent. And it grows, merges, disappears from the surface, sinks to the depths, and again emerges. ~ Leo Tolstoy

A man's clarity of judgment is never very good when you're involved, and as you grow older, and as you grow more involved, your clarity of judgement suffers . ~ Leo Szilard