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.
Leo StraussRead
A conservative, I take it, is a man who despises vulgarity; but the argument which is concerned exclusively with calculations of success, and is based on blindness to the nobility of the effort, is vulgar.
Interpretation
What this quote means
The quote critiques a narrow view of success that disregards the intrinsic value of effort.
Leo Strauss expresses a distinction between a conservative perspective that values the nobility of effort and a vulgar understanding of success that solely focuses on quantifiable outcomes. He implies that true worth lies not just in achieving results but also in recognizing the dignity of the struggle involved in striving for those results, suggesting that a purely results-driven mindset is superficial and lacking depth.
Themes
SuccessEffortNobilityVulgarityPhilosophy
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can serve as a discussion starter at a philosophical seminar on the nature of success.
More from Leo Strauss
All quotes →If the highest things are unknowable, then the highest capacity or virtue of man cannot be theoretical wisdom.
Leo StraussRead
The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.
Leo StraussRead
The Jewish people and their fate are the living witness for the absence of redemption. This, one could say, is the meaning of the chosen people; the Jews are chosen to prove the absence of redemption.
Leo StraussRead
Similar quotes
There is nothing good or evil save in the will.
EpictetusRead
The basic thesis of gestalt theory might be formulated thus: there are contexts in which what is happening in the whole cannot be deduced from the characteristics of the separate pieces, but conversely; what happens to a part of the whole is, in clearcut cases, determined by the laws of the inner structure of its whole.
Max WertheimerRead
I'm convinced that I'm a child of God. That's wonderful, exhilarating, liberating, full of promise. But the burden which goes along with that is, I'm convinced that everybody is a child of God. . . . I weep a lot. I thank God I laugh a lot, too. The main thing in one's own private world is to try to laugh as much as you cry.
Maya AngelouRead
Pleasure is our first and kindred good. It is the starting point of every choice and of every aversion, and to it we always come back, inasmuch as we make feeling the rule by which to judge of every good thing.
EpicurusRead
It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.
PlatoRead
They learned to have a very high opinion of God and a very low opinion of His works—although they could tell you that this world had been made by God Himself. What they didn’t see was that it is beautiful, and that some of the greatest beauties are the briefest.
Wendell BerryRead