Leo Strauss quotes - page 4

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:

All political action is then guided by some thought of better or worse.

Leo Strauss

It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.

Leo Strauss

Science is susceptible of infinite progress. But how can science be susceptible of infinite progress if its object does not have an inner infinity?

Leo Strauss

Philosophy has to grant that revelation is possible. But to grant that revelation is possible means to grant that philosophy is perhaps something infinitely unimportant.

Leo Strauss

All political action aims at either preservation or change.

Leo Strauss

Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy.

Leo Strauss

No nobler dream was ever dreamt. It is surely nobler to be a victim of the most noble dream than to profit from a sordid reality and to wallow in it.

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.

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.

Leo Strauss

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

Leo Strauss

Philosophy has to grant that revelation is possible. But to grant that revelation is possible means to grant that philosophy is perhaps something infinitely unimportant. To grant that revelation is possible means to grant that the philosophic life is not necessarily, not evidently, the right life. Philosophy, the life devoted to the quest for evident knowledge available to man as man, would itself rest on an unevident, arbitrary, or blind decision. This would merely confirm the thesis of faith, that there is no possibility of consistency, of a consistent and thoroughly sincere life, without belief in revelation. The mere fact that philosophy and revelation cannot refute each other would constitute the refutation of philosophy by revelation.

Leo Strauss

Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics, and the charm of humble awe, which is engendered by meditation on the human soul and its experiences. Philosophy is characterized by the gentle, if firm, refusal to succumb to either charm. It is the highest form of the mating of courage and moderation. In spite of its highness or nobility, it could appear as Sisyphean or ugly, when one contrasts its achievement with its goal. Yet it is necessarily accompanied, sustained and elevated by eros. It is graced by nature's grace.

Leo Strauss