“It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low.”

— Leo Strauss

Source: Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968), p. 225
Context: It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low. In doing the latter one necessarily distorts the high, whereas in doing the former one does not deprive the low of the freedom to reveal itself as fully as what it is.

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "It is safer to try to understand the low in the light of the high than the high in the light of the low." by Leo Strauss?

Leo Strauss78

Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservati… 1899–1973

Related quotes

“It is better to aim high and miss than to aim low and hit.”

Les Brown (1945) American politician

“Firms that have a high BE/ME (a low stock price relative to book value) tend to have low earnings on assets. Conversely, low BE/ME (a high stock price relative to book value) is associated with persistently high earnings.”

Eugene Fama (1939) American economist and Nobel laureate in Economics

Source: Common risk factors in the returns on stocks and bonds, 1993, p. 8

“Low walls are much less expensive to build than high ones”

Ernest Flagg (1857–1947) American architect

Small Houses: Their Economic Design and Construction (1922)
Context: Low walls are much less expensive to build than high ones... it is possible to use forms without the usual waste of lumber... when waste is avoided, forms greatly reduce the cost of stonework... much can be saved in the construction of foundations by methods described...<!-- Introduction

“For me this world was neither so high nor so low as the Church would have it; chequered over with its wild light shadows, I could love it and all the children of it, more dearly, perhaps, because it was not all light.”

James Anthony Froude book The Nemesis of Faith

Confessions Of A Sceptic
The Nemesis of Faith (1849)

“So from a water clear, the trembling light
Of Phoebus, or the silver queen of night,
Along the spacious rooms with splendour plays,
Now high, now low, and shifts a thousand ways.”

John Hoole (1727–1803) British translator

Book VIII, line 490
Translations, Orlando Furioso of Ludovico Ariosto (1773)

“The poetical character… is not itself — it has no self — it is every thing and nothing — It has no character — it enjoys light and shade; it lives in gusto, be it fair or foul, high or low, rich or poor, mean or elevated.”

John Keats Letter to Richard Woodhouse

It has as much delight in conceiving an Iago as an Imogen. What shocks the virtuous philospher, delights the camelion poet.
Letter to Richard Woodhouse (October 27, 1818)
Letters (1817–1820)

“When the stakes are high, bow down low.”

Beth Moore (1957) American evangelist

Source: Daniel: Lives of Integrity, Words of Prophecy - Member Book