What I Believe (1938)
Context: I believe in aristocracy, though — if that is the right word, and if a democrat may use it. Not an aristocracy of power, based upon rank and influence, but an aristocracy of the sensitive, the considerate and the plucky. Its members are to be found in all nations and classes, and all through the ages, and there is a secret understanding between them when they meet. They represent the true human tradition, the one permanent victory of our queer race over cruelty and chaos. Thousands of them perish in obscurity, a few are great names. They are sensitive for others as well as for themselves, they are considerate without being fussy, their pluck is not swankiness but the power to endure, and they can take a joke.
“Liberal education is the necessary endeavor to found an aristocracy within democratic mass society.”
“What is liberal education,” p. 5
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
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Leo Strauss 78
Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservati… 1899–1973Related quotes
Scotland and Northern Ireland (June 18, 2007)
Context: Differences of opinions, contrasting objectives are not just fundamental - they are necessary in a democratic society. What matters is that they are pursued within the context of the rule of law and mutual respect for the legitimacy of all strands of opinion.
“What is liberal education,” pp. 4-5
Liberalism Ancient and Modern (1968)
Context: It was once said that democracy is the regime that stands or falls by virtue: a democracy is a regime in which all or most adults are men of virtue, and since virtue seems to require wisdom, a regime in which all or most adults are virtuous and wise, or the society in which all or most adults have developed their reason to a high degree, or the rational society. Democracy, in a word, is meant to be an aristocracy which has broadened into a universal aristocracy. … There exists a whole science—the science which I among thousands of others profess to teach, political science—which so to speak has no other theme than the contrast between the original conception of democracy, or what one may call the ideal of democracy, and democracy as it is. … Liberal education is the ladder by which we try to ascend from mass democracy to democracy as originally meant.
As quoted in David Cantor and Alan M. Schwartz (1995), Anti-Defamation League book -The Religious Right: The Assault on Tolerance and Pluralism In America
“Public education was not founded to give society what it wants. Quite the opposite.”
The Aquarian Conspiracy (1980), Chapter Nine, Flying and Seeing: New Ways to Learn
" Women: One Half of Our Society http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Women_-_One_half_of_our_society" (1981).
Source: The Revolution and Woman in Iraq
Context: The complete emancipation of women from the ties which held them back in the past, during the ages of despotism and ignorance, is a basic aim of the Party and the Revolution. Women make up one half of society. Our society will remain backward and in chains unless its women are liberated, enlightened and educated.
Source: Défense des Lettres [In Defense of Letters] (1937), p. 41