Strauss

"The Athenian does not question the divine origin of the Cretan and Spartan laws; he accepts it on the authority of his interlocutors. But he immediately asks for the reason or the end for which those laws were established... He asks, in Socratic fashion, what the lawgiver had in mind in establishing the laws." — Chapter I, p. 4

free men rule for the sake of freedom, just as in an oligarchy wealthy men rule for the sake of wealth.

You remember the statement in the Oeconomicus that one way of getting rich is war and tyranny.

Just government is government which rules in teh interest of the whole society, not just a part.

Our Great Tradition includes political philosophy and thus seems to vouch for its possibility and necessity. According to the same tradition, political philosophy was founded by Socrates.

The divine things are higher in rank than the human things.

It is misleading to describe the thinker Machiavelli as a patriot. He is a patriot of a particular kind: he is more concerned with the salvation of his fatherland than with the salvation of his soul. His patriotism therefore presupposes a comprehensive reflection regarding the status of the fatherland on the one hand and of the soul on the other.

If there is no standard higher than the ideals of one’s society, there exists no possibility of taking a critical distance from those ideals. But the mere fact that we can raise the question of the worth of the ideals of our society shows that there is something in man that is not altogether enslaved to his society, and therefore that we are able, and even obliged, to look for a standard with reference to which we can judge of the ideals of our society, as well as of any other society. This standard cannot be found in the needs of the society concerned.