Leo Strauss quotes

Leo Strauss was a German-American political philosopher, widely recognized for his work on classical political theory and the relationship between philosophy and politics. His interpretations of ancient and modern thinkers have significantly influenced contemporary political thought. He is known for his exploration of esoteric writing and for founding the so-called "Straussian" school of thought. Here are 89 of his quotes:

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

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

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

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

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

The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.

Leo Strauss

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

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

Education to perfect gentlemanship, to human excellence, liberal education consists in reminding oneself of human excellence, of human greatness.

Leo Strauss

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

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 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

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

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

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

Leo Strauss

All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable, which makes you see something you weren't noticing, which makes you see something that isn't even visible.

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

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

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

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

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

Liberal education, which consists in the constant intercourse with the greatest minds, is a training in the highest form of modesty. ... It is at the same time a training in boldness. ... It demands from us the boldness implied in the resolve to regard the accepted views as mere opinions, or to regard the average opinions as extreme opinions which are at least as likely to be wrong as the most strange or least popular opinions.

Leo Strauss