Leo Strauss Quotes

What you believe matters, however. It’s all anyone has to act on. And since what you do is who you are, your actions define you. If you don’t believe anything is true simply because you can’t logically prove what’s true, you won’t do anything. You won’t be anything. You’ll end up spending your life in a rocking chair looking out at the horizon waiting for an answer that never comes. You might as well be dead. It’s an old philosophical problem.

The questions of philosophy proper are human desires and fears and aspirations - human emotions - taking an intellectual form.

Quite early on, and certainly since I started writing, I found that philosophical questions occupied me more than any other kind. I hadn't really thought of them as being philosophical questions, but one rapidly comes to an understanding that philosophy's only really about two questions: 'What is true?' and 'What is good?'

And now brothers, I will ask you a terrible question, and God knows I ask it also of myself. Is the truth beyond all truths, beyond the stars, just this: that to live without him is the real death, that to die with him the only life?

Philosophy has no end in view save truth; faith looks for nothing but obedience and piety.

You discarded most of the lies along the way but held on to the one that said life mattered.

I don't think any of us really knows why we're here. But I think we're supposed to believe we're here for a purpose.

As does every young man studying philosophy, I naturally asked myself questions about the truth of all this, and about the meaning of freedom, predestination, and liberty of choice and so on. But to have asked questions of yourself about it, I think is not too important. Let's say - I remain - I remained a believer.

Can you live without answers? All of you, ask that of yourself. Can you live without answers? Because if you cannot, then most assuredly you will invent your own answers and they will comfort you. And all those who do not share your view will by their very existence strike fear and hatred into your heart. What god blesses this?

Philosophy is the opposite of fairy tales

As far as I'm concerned, humans have not yet come up with a belief that's worth believing.

In regard to the philosophers, if they be true philosophers, i.e., lovers of truth, they should not be irritated that the earth moves. Rather, if they realize that they have held a false belief, they should thank those have shown them the truth; and if their opinion stands firm that the earth doesn't move, they will have reason to boast than be angered.

Life is everything, and you haven't lived it properly until you believe.

And usually [the philosopher] philosophizes either in order to resign himself to life, or to seek some finality in it, or to distract himself and forget his griefs, or for pastime and amusement.

Man was an accident on this world or it would have been made better for him!

The truth is still the truth whether or not you believe it. Can we say the same about lies? No, lies only exist because we believe them. If we don't believe in lies, they simply disappear.

I wanted my players to always be searching, especially for truth. I wanted them to know what they believed and be able to defend it. Truth will always stand the test of scrutiny.

The God to whom depth in philosophy bring back men's minds is far from being the same from whom a little philosophy estranges them

If life teaches anything at all it teaches that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes that there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question.

There is obviously a great human need for religion because life seems to be such a mystery.

Because I've heard so many stories that I don't know which one is the most popular. But I do know which is the least popular. The truth.

The meaning of life is that nobody knows the meaning of life.

Philosophy, the love of Wisdom, is at the very bottom defence against the incomprehensible.

I believe science has a wonderful ability, in an unbiased way, to offer hope to many people who are confused, but it's not the only way to find hope.

Truth is a theory that is constantly being disproved. Only lies, it seems, go on forever.