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Leo Strauss

74 quotes

“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 (1899–1973) first seen 1957 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: What Is Political Philosophy" in The Journal of Politics, 19(3) (Aug. 1957) by the Southern Political Science Association, p. 343
“No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice, envy and hatred, and hence there cannot be a society which does not have to employ coercive restraint.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) first seen 1964 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The City and Man, p. 5 (1964)
“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 (1899–1973) first seen 1973 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil", Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 3, nos. 2 and 3 (1973)
“We are confronted with the incompatible claims of Jerusalem and Athens to our allegiance. We are open to both and willing to listen to each. We ourselves are not wise but we wish to become wise. We are seekers for wisdom, philo-sophoi.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Athens and Jerusalem : Some Preliminary Reflections in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (1985), p. 149
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Jewish Philosophy and the crisis of Modernity : Essays And Lectures in Modern Jewish Thought, p. 327 (1997)
“Political Zionism is problematic for obvious reasons. But I can never forget what it achieved as a moral force in an era of complete dissolution. It helped to stem the tide of ‘progressive’ leveling of venerable, ancestral differences; it fulfilled a conservative function.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The purpose of Plato, or of Aristotle, as Fārābī conceived of it, is sufficiently revealed in this seemingly conventional praise of philosophy.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Persecution, then, gives rise to a peculiar technique of writing, and therewith to a peculiar type of literature, in which the truth about all crucial things is presented exclusively between the lines. That literature is addressed, not to all readers, but to trustworthy and intelligent readers only.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“An exoteric book contains then two teachings: a popular teaching of an edifying character, which is in the foreground; and a philosophic teaching concerning the most important subject, which is indicated only between the lines.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The works of the great writers of the past are very beautiful even from without. And yet their visible beauty is sheer ugliness, compared with the beauty of those hidden treasures which disclose themselves only after very long, never easy, but always pleasant work. This always difficult but always pleasant work is, I believe, what the philosophers had in mind when they recommended education. Education, they 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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is a general observation that people write as they read. As a rule, careful writers are careful readers and vice versa. A careful writer wants to be read carefully. He cannot know what it means to be read carefully but by having done careful reading himself. Reading precedes writing. We read before we write. We learn to write by reading. A man learns to write well by reading well good books, by reading most carefully books which are most carefully written.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberal relativism has its roots in the natural right tradition of tolerance or in the notion that everyone has a natural right to the pursuit of happiness as he understands happiness; but in itself it is a seminary of intolerance.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Once we realize that the principles of our actions have no other support than our blind choice, we really do not believe in them anymore... In order to live, we have to silence the easily silenced voice of reason, which tells us that our principles are in themselves as good or as bad an any other principles. The more we cultivate reason, the more we cultivate nihilism...”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even by proving that a certain view is indispensable for living well, one proves merely that the view in question is a salutary myth: one does not prove it to be true.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Philosophizing means, then, to ascend from public dogma to essentially private knowledge.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“To avert the danger [posed by theory] to life, Nietzsche could choose one of two ways: he could insist on the strictly esoteric character of the theoretical analysis of life—that is, restore the Platonic notion of the noble delusion—or else he could deny the possibility of theory proper and so conceive of thought as essentially subservient to, or dependent on, life or fate... If not Nietzsche himself, at any rate his successors [Heidegger] adopted the second alternative.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is of the essence of traditions that they cover or conceal their humble foundations by erecting impressive edifices on them.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Nothing ought to be said or done which could create the impression that unbiased reconsideration of the most elementary premises of philosophy is a merely academic or historical affair.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“By realizing that we are ignorant of the most important things, we realize at the same time that the most important thing for us, or the one thing needful, is quest for knowledge of the most important things or quest for wisdom.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In following this movement towards its end we shall inevitably reach a point beyond which the scene is darkened by the shadow of Hitler. Unfortunately, it does not go without saying that in our examination we must avoid the fallacy that in the last decades has frequently been used as a substitute for the reductio ad absurdum: the reductio ad Hitlerum. A view is not refuted by the fact that it happens to have been shared by Hitler.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The sophist, in contradistinction to the philosopher, is not set in motion and kept in motion by the sting of the awareness of the fundamental difference between conviction or belief and genuine insight.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[The sophist] is concerned with wisdom, not for its own sake, not because he hates the lie in the soul more than anything else, but for the sake of the honor or the prestige that attends wisdom.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We shall not shock anyone, we shall merely expose ourselves to good-natured or at any rate harmless ridicule, if we profess ourselves inclined to the old fashioned and simple opinion according to which Machiavelli was a teacher of evil.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We believe that failing to call a spade a spade is not scientific.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When speaking of a “body of knowledge” or of “the results of research,” e.g., we tacitly assign the same cognitive status to inherited knowledge and to independently acquired knowledge. To counteract this tendency a special effort is required to transform inherited knowledge into genuine knowledge by revitalizing its original discovery, and to discriminate between the genuine and the spurious elements of what claims to be inherited knowledge.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[The philosopher] is ultimately compelled to transcend not merely the dimensions of common opinion, of political opinion, but the dimension of political life as such; for he is left to realize that the ultimate aim of political life cannot be reached by political life, but only by a life devoted to contemplation, to philosophy.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It was not the "God-intoxicated" philosopher but the hard-headed, not to say hard-hearted, pupil of Machiavelli and philologic-historical critic of the Bible. Orthodoxy could be returned to only if Spinoza was wrong in every respect.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“There were two reasons why contemporary Jews were inclined to celebrate Spinoza. The first is Spinoza's assumed merit about mankind and only secondarily about the Jews; the second is his assumed merit about the Jewish people and only secondarily about mankind. Both reasons had induced contemporary Jews not only informally to rescind the excommunication which the Jewish community in Amsterdam had pronounced against Spinoza, but even, as Cohen put it, to canonize him.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The philosophy of Kant's great successors was consciously a synthesis of Spinoza's and Kant's philosophies. Spinoza's characteristic contribution to this synthesis was a novel conception of God. He thus showed the way toward a new religion or religiousness which was to inspire a wholly new kind of society, a new kind of Church.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In our time scholars generally study the Bible in the manner in which they study any other book. As is generally admitted, Spinoza more than any other man laid the foundation for this kind of Biblical study.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Culture” means … the cultivation of the mind, the taking care and improving of the native faculties of the mind in accordance with the nature of the mind. Just as the soil needs cultivators of the soil, the mind needs teachers. But teachers are not as easy to come by as farmers. The teachers themselves are pupils and must be pupils. But there cannot be an infinite regress: ultimately there must be teachers who are not in turn pupils. Those teachers who are not in turn pupils are the great minds.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A mass culture is a culture which can be appropriated by the meanest capacities without any intellectual or moral effort whatsoever. … Liberal education is the counterpoison to mass culture, to the corroding effects of mass culture, to its inherent tendency to produce nothing but “specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Liberal education reminds those members of a mass democracy who have ears to hear, of human greatness.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Life is too short to live with any but the greatest books.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We somehow believe that our point of view is superior, higher than those of the greatest minds—either because our point of view is that of our time, and our time, being later than the time of the greatest minds, can be presumed to be superior to their times; or else because we believe that each the greatest minds was right from his point of view, but not, as he claims, simply right.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The facile delusions which conceal from us our true situation all amount to this: that we are, or can be, wiser than the wisest men of the past. We are thus induced to play the part, not of attentive and docile listeners, but of impresarios and lion-tamers.”
Leo Strauss (1899–1973) said by 1973 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source