Quotes from book
Thoughts on Machiavelli

Name: Thoughts on Machiavelli
Author: Leo Strauss

Thoughts on Machiavelli is a book by Leo Strauss first published in 1958. The book is a collection of lectures he gave at the University of Chicago in which he dissects the work of Niccolò Machiavelli. The book contains commentary on Machiavelli's The Prince and the Discourses on Livy.Leo Strauss argued that the most visible fact about Machiavelli's doctrine is also the most useful one: Machiavelli seems to be a teacher of wickedness. Strauss sought to incorporate this idea in his interpretation without permitting it to overwhelm or exhaust his exegesis of The Prince and the Discourses on the First Ten Books of Livy.

“The silence of a wise man is always meaningful.”

Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli

Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 30

“The most superficial fact regarding the Discourses, the fact that the number of its chapters equals the number of books of Livy's History, compelled us to start a chain of tentative reasoning which brings us suddenly face to face with the only New Testament quotation that ever appears in Machiavelli's two books and with an enormous blasphemy.”

Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli

Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 49

“The problem inherent in the surface of things, and only in the surface of things, is the heart of things.”

Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli

Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 13

“We believe that failing to call a spade a spade is not scientific.”

Leo Strauss book Thoughts on Machiavelli

Source: Thoughts on Machiavelli (1958), p. 50