“According to our social science, we can be or become wise in all matters of secondary importance, but we have to be resigned to utter ignorance in the most important respect: we cannot have any knowledge regarding the ultimate principles of our choices, i. e. regarding their soundness or unsoundness… We are then in the position of beings who are sane and sober when engaged in trivial business and who gamble like madmen when confronted with serious issues.”
Source: Natural Right and History (1953), p. 4
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Leo Strauss 78
Classical philosophy specialist and father of neoconservati… 1899–1973Related quotes
Address to the Pan Pacific HIV/AIDS Conference, Auckland, New Zealand, October 2005

2013, Cape Town University Address (June 2013)
Context: We always have the opportunity to choose our better history. We can always understand that most important decision -- the decision we make when we find our common humanity in one another. That’s always available to us, that choice. [... ] it can be heard in the confident voices of young people like you. It is that spirit, that innate longing for justice and equality, for freedom and solidarity -- that’s the spirit that can light the way forward. It's in you.

This is the radio personality Harry Harrison (born 20 September 1930), quoted in Think Vol. 21, No. 1 (January 1955), and The Book of Positive Quotations (2007) edited by John Cook, Steve Deger, and Leslie Ann Gibson
Misattributed
Source: Complexity and Postmodernism (1998), p. 1-2; as cited by David Byrne (1999) in: " Complexity and Postmodernism: Book Review http://jasss.soc.surrey.ac.uk/2/2/review1.html" in JASSS Vol 2 (2)

10 December 2015 https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/bnp33d/we-asked-a-white-supremacist-what-he-thought-of-donald-trump-1210
2015

Source: Think Big (1996), p. 244

Volume 3, Ch. 10
Fiction, The Book of the Short Sun (1999–2001)