Jaba Zautashvili > Jaba's Quotes

“Philosophy as such is nothing but genuine awareness of the problems, i.e., of the fundamental and comprehensive problems. It is impossible to think about these problems without becoming inclined toward a solution, toward one or the other of the very few typical solutions. Yet as long as there is no wisdom but only quest for wisdom, the evidence of all solutions is necessarily smaller than the evidence of the problems. Therefore the philosopher ceases to be a philosopher at the moment at which the 'subjective certainty' [quoting M. Alexandre Kojève] of a solution becomes stronger than his awareness of the problematic character of that solution. At that moment the sectarian is born. The danger of succumbing to the attraction of solutions is essential to philosophy which, without incurring this danger, would degenerate into playing with the problems. But the philosopher does not necessarily succumb to this danger, as is shown by Socrates, who never belonged to a sect and never founded one. And even if the philosophic friends are compelled to be members of a sect or to found one, they are not necessarily members of one and the same sect: Amicus Plato.”
― Leo Strauss, What is Political Philosophy?

“There is no one force, no group, and no class that is the preserver of liberty. Liberty is preserved by those who are against the existing chief power. Oppositions which do not express genuine social forces are as trivial, in relation to entrenched power, as the old court jesters.”
― James Burnham, The Machiavellians: Defenders of Freedom

“The political is the most intense and extreme antagonism, and every concrete antagonism becomes that much more political the closer it approaches the most extreme point, that of the friend-enemy grouping.”
― Carl Schmitt, The Concept of the Political

“Commitment is a word invented in our abstract modernity to signify the absence of any real motives in the soul for moral dedication.”
― Allan Bloom, The Closing of the American Mind

“For try as one may to expel nature with a hayfork, it will always come back.”
― Leo Strauss, On Tyranny

“We are in need of a second education in order to accustom our eyes to the noble reserve and the quiet grandeur of the classics.”
― Leo Strauss, On Tyranny

“It thus becomes intelligible that modern Europe, once it had started out—in order to avoid the quarrel over the right faith—in search of a neutral ground as such, finally arrived at faith in technology.”
― Leo Strauss

“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.”
― Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern

“Nothing lovable is eternal or sempiternal or deathless, or that the eternal is not lovable.”
― Leo Strauss, Liberalism Ancient and Modern

“My dears, as long as a man is a minister, adore him; when he falls, help drag him in the gutter.”
― Balzac Honore De, Eugénie Grandet

“Every human being and every society is what it is by virtue of the highest to which it looks up. The city, if it is healthy, looks up, not to the laws which it can unmake as it made them, but to the unwritten laws, the divine law, the gods of the city. The city must transcend itself. ...the most important consideration concerns that which transcends the city or which is higher than the city; it does not concern things which are simply subordinate to the city.”
― Leo Strauss, The City and Man

“Self-control is the chief element in self-respect, and self-respect is the chief element in courage.”
― Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War

“Generally speaking, in pre-modern times you had an idealistic tradition, which was political, and a hedonisic tradition, which was non-political. Now in the 17th century a merger of these two traditions takes place, a political hedonism. And that is one of the greatest changes which has ever happened, and of course up to the present day this determines, with many modifications, that would lead us too far.”
― Leo Strauss

“The fundamental question of classical political philosophy is whether there are some conventions (nomoi) which are natural, i.e., whose force is not due simply to arbitrary human invention.”
― Thomas L. Pangle

“The Classical died, as we shall die, but it died unknowing. It believed in an eternal Being and to the last it lived its days with frank satisfaction, each day spent as a gift of the gods. But we know our history.”
― Oswald Spengler, The Decline of the West

“The most repulsive and grotesque spectacle is that of the superiority of a living professor over a dead genius.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“In an age in which the media broadcast countless pieces of foolishness, the educated man is defined not by what he knows, but by what he doesn't know.”
― Nicolas Gomez Davila

“Hierarchies are celestial. In hell all are equal.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“Liberty is not an end, but a means. Whoever mistakes it for an end does not know what to do once he attains it.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Notas: Unzeitgemäße Gedanken

“Man matures when he stops believing that politics solves his problems.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila, Escolios a una texto implícito: Selección

“The antithesis of a real and apparent world is lacking... there is only one world and it is false, cruel, contradictory, seductive without meaning — A world thus constituted is the real world. We have need of lies in order to conquer this reality "Life ought to inspire confidence": the task thus imposed is tremendous. To solve it man must be a liar by nature, he must be above all an artist... Art and nothing but art! It is the great means of making life possible, the great seduction to life, the great stimulant of life.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Popular suffrage is less absurd today than it was yesterday: not because majorities are more cultured but because minorities are less so.”
― Nicolás Gómez Dávila

“Power changes its appearance but not its reality.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Power is linked with war, and a society wishing to limit war's ravages can find no other way than by limiting the scope of Power.”
― Bertrand De Jouvenel, On Power: The Natural History of Its Growth

“Order was not made by god or man. It always was and is and shall be an ever-living fire, flaring up in regular measures and dying down in regular measures.”
― Heraclitus

“Somewhere in the universe, order must prevail, even if only in solitary contemplation.”
― Ernst Jünger

“I must be cruel only to be kind;
Thus bad begins, and worse remains behind.”
― William Shakespeare , Hamlet

“How much blood and horror is at the bottom of all 'good things'!”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo

“It goes without saying that mercy remains the privilege of the most powerful man”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, On the Genealogy of Morals / Ecce Homo

“Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West