What difference is there, do you think, between those in Plato's cave who can only marvel at the shadows and images of various objects, provided they are content and don't know what they miss, and the philosopher who has emerged from the cave and sees the real things?

Of two evils choose the least.

There is nothing I congratulate myself on more heartily than on never having joined a sect.

They may attack me with an army of six hundred syllogisms; and if I do not recant, they will proclaim me a heretic.

Your library is your paradise.

Read first the best books. The important thing for you is not how much you know, but the quality of what you know.

As an example of just how useless these philosophers are for any practice in life there is Socrates himself, the one and only wise man, according to the Delphic Oracle. Whenever he tried to do anything in public he had to break off amid general laughter. While he was philosophizing about clouds and ideas, measuring a flea's foot and marveling at a midge's humming, he learned nothing about the affairs of ordinary life.