Philosophy Quotes by Leo Strauss

8 Philosophy quotes by Leo Strauss

All Philosophy quotes Leo Strauss’s page

Strauss’s classic political philosophy is rendered in eight compact quotes that invite deeper reading.

Rate this collection: ★ ★ ★ ★ ★ No ratings yet

Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin…

Leo Strauss

Image

The emancipation of the scholars and scientists from philosophy is according to [Nietzsche] only a part of the democratic movement, i.e. of…

Leo Strauss

Image

It is as absurd to expect members of philosophy departments to be philosophers as it is to expect members of art departments…

Leo Strauss

Image

“There is a remarkable sentence of Pascal according to which we know too little to be dogmatists and too much to be…

Leo Strauss

Image

Nothing ought to be said or done which could create the impression that unbiased reconsideration of the most elementary premises of philosophy…

Leo Strauss

Image

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

Leo Strauss

Image

Education, they [philosophers] felt, is the only answer to the always pressing question, to the political question par excellence, of how to…

Leo Strauss

Image

The adjective "political" in "political philosophy" designates not so much the subject matter as a manner of treatment; from this point of…

Leo Strauss

Image

Other authors on Philosophy

More by 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…

Leo Strauss

Image

Men are constantly attracted and deluded by two opposite charms: the charm of competence which is engendered by mathematics and everything akin to mathematics,…

Leo Strauss

Image

“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

Image

“Todo ser humano y toda sociedad es lo que es en virtud de su máxima aspiración. La ciudad, si es sana, aspira no a…

Leo Strauss

Image

“Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic: it has no attributes peculiar to fallen angels. It is not even Machiavellian,…

Leo Strauss

Image

We somehow believe that our point of view is superior, higher than those of the greatest minds either because our point of view is…

Leo Strauss

Image

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…

Leo Strauss

Image

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…

Leo Strauss

Image

If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom.

Leo Strauss

Image

History teaches us that a given view has been abandoned in favor of another by all men, or by all competent men, or perhaps…

Leo Strauss

Image

No bloody or unbloody change of society can eradicate the evil in man: as long as there will be men, there will be malice,…

Leo Strauss

Image

Liberal education, which consists in the constant intercourse with the greatest minds, is a training in the highest form of modesty. ... It is…

Leo Strauss

Image

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

Leo Strauss

Image

The contemporary rejection of natural right leads to nihilism — nay, it is identical with nihilism,

Leo Strauss

Image

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…

Leo Strauss

Image