63 Quotes by Leo Strauss

God’s reasons for communicating with man must be subsumed under his reason for communicating to him his account of his creation of the world – and man.

Nietzsche was not an Existentialist. Existentialism emerged out of the conflict between Nietzsche and Kierkegaard, the Danish religious writer.

The present Anglo-German war is then of symbolic significance. In defending modern civilisation against German nihilism, the English are defending the eternal principles of civilisation.

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 fiddles, and it does not know that Rome burns.

The Prussian state is, for Hegel, the model most akin to the rational state because it represents, thanks both to the Protestant religion and the authority of the monarchy, a synthesis between the revolutionary exigencies of principles and the traditional exigencies of organization.

Aristotle doesn’t exist for Nietzsche.

The proper work of a writing is truly to talk, or to reveal the truth, to some while leading others to salutary opinions; the proper work of a writing is to arouse to thinking those who are by nature fit for it; the good writing achieves its end if the reader considers carefully the ‘logographic necessity’ of every part, however small or seemingly insignificant, of the writing.

Passionately yes, passionately no” is the worst of all tastes. And now after one has overcome that, after one has followed this natural inclination, one must learn to put some art into one’s feelings and rather make an experiment with the artificial as distinguished from and opposed to the natural. That is what the true artists of life do. They do not follow the natural impulses, but experiment with the artificial.

By virtue of being an -ism, pluralism is a monism.