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
Do not grieve over someone who changes all of the sudden. It might be that he has given up acting and returned to his true self.
SocratesRead
I do worry about the expectation to look a certain way.
Emma WatsonRead
Let us say what we feel, and feel what we say; let speech harmonize with life.
Seneca The YoungerRead
Alcohol doesn't console, it doesn't fill up anyone's psychological gaps, all it replaces is the lack of God.
Marguerite DurasRead
It may be in the cultural particularities of people — in their oddities — that some of the most instructive revelations of what it is to be generically human are to be found.
Clifford GeertzRead
A little cooling down of animal excitability and instinct, a little loss of animal toughness, a little irritable weakness and descent of the pain-threshold, will bring the worm at the core of all our usual springs of delight into full view, and turn us into melancholy metaphysicians.
William JamesRead