Leo Strauss Quotes
Leo Strauss was a German-Jewish philosopher who emigrated to the United States in 1937 and spent most of his career at the University of Chicago. He devoted his work to the recovery of classical political philosophy and to the interpretation of texts that, he argued, had been written to communicate dangerous truths esoterically. The quotes below are attributed to Leo Strauss, organized by topic.
Browse Leo Strauss by topic
Leo Strauss on God
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“Commenting upon the Aleinu prayer , in "Why We Remain Jews" (1962)”
The kingdom is Yours, and You will reign in glory for all eternity. As it is written in Your Torah: "The Lord shall reign for ever and ever." And it is said: " And the Lord shall be King over all the earth: on that day the Lord shall be One, and His name One." 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 wal
Leo Strauss on Knowledge
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“Liberal education is the counter-poison to mass culture.”
What is liberal education,” p. 5 The phrase “specialists without spirit or vision and voluptuaries without heart.” is from Max Weber . -
Attributed to Leo Strauss:
“The fundamental question is whether men can acquire that knowledge of the good without which they cannot guide their lives by the unaided efforts of their natural powers.”
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Attributed to Leo Strauss:
“Philosophy is the quest for wisdom or for knowledge regarding the most important things.”
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“Why We Remain Jews" (1962)”
Science, as the positivist understands it, is susceptible of infinite progress. That you learn in every elementary school today, I believe. Every result of science is provisional and subject to future revision, and this will never change. In other words, fifty thousand years from now there will still be results entirely different from those now, but still subject to revision. Science is susceptibl -
“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.”
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.”
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 .”
Athens and Jerusalem : Some Preliminary Reflections in Studies in Platonic Political Philosophy (1985), p. 149
Leo Strauss on Mind
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“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.”
What Is Political Philosophy" in The Journal of Politics , 19 (3) (Aug. 1957) by the Southern Political Science Association, p. 343
Leo Strauss on Politics
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Attributed to Leo Strauss:
“Wisdom requires unhesitating loyalty to a decent constitution.”
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Attributed to Leo Strauss:
“The philosopher is and remains a stranger in the city.”
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“Note on the Plan of Nietzsche's Beyond Good and Evil ", Interpretation: A Journal of Political Philosophy 3, nos. 2 and 3 (1973)”
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 on Truth
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“Persecution gives rise to a peculiar technique of writing.”
p. 25
Things actually not said by Leo Strauss
A number of widely-shared lines are circulated as Leo Strauss but are in fact from someone else. Did Leo Strauss say these? No. Each entry below pairs the line with the person who actually wrote it.
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Did Leo Strauss say this? No.
“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.”
This quote is commonly attributed to philosophers but its actual source is uncertain or unverified in the standard reference works. Wikiquote's note on this attribution: Attributed to Strauss at many sites on the internet, this is actually Norman Maclean , in A River Runs Through It (1976)