Rule of law is inferior to the rule of living intelligence because laws, owing to their generality, cannot determine wisely what is right and proper … - Leo Strauss

It is of the essence of traditions that they cover or conceal their humble foundations by erecting impressive edifices on them.

Nothing ought to be said or done which could create the impression that unbiased reconsideration of the most elementary premises of philosophy is a merely academic or historical affair.

For a philosophy based on faith is no longer philosophy. Perhaps it was this unresolved conflict which has prevented Western thought from ever coming to rest. Perhaps it is this conflict which is at the bottom of a kind of thought which is philosophic indeed but no longer Greek: modern philosophy. It is in trying to understand modern philosophy that we come across Machiavelli. Machiavelli is the only political thinker whose name has come into common use for designating a kind of politics, which exists and will continue to exist independently of his influence, a politics guided exclusively by considerations of 'expediency, which uses all means, fair or foul, iron or poison, for achieving its ends-its end being the ag­grandizement of one's country or fatherland-but also using the father­ land in the service of the self-aggrandizement of the politician or statesman or one's party.