All political action aims at either preservation or change. When desiring to preserve, we wish to prevent a change for the worse;… — Leo Strauss Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
The clarification of our political ideas insensibly changes into and becomes indistinguishable from the history of political ideas. — Leo Strauss Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 las leyes que puede deshacer del mismo modo en que las hizo, sino a las leyes no escritas, la ley divina, los dioses de la ciudad. La ciudad debe trascenderse a sí misma. ...El factor más… — Leo Strauss Copy Share
“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… — Leo Strauss Copy Share
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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image
If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom. — Leo Strauss Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share 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 Copy Share Image