One doesn't diminish a philosopher's achievement, and doesn't undermine its soundness, by showing how the particular set of questions on which he focused, the orientation he brought to bear on his focus, has some causal connection to the circumstances of his life.

What is play and delightful one kind of child is coercion and torture for another, and will not take no matter how much coercion is applied.

I was trained as a philosopher never to put philosophers and their ideas into historical contexts, since historical context has nothing to do with the validity of the philosopher's positions. I agree that assessing validity and contextualizing historically are two entirely distinct matters and not to be confused with one another. And yet that firm distinction doesn't lead me to endorse the usual way in which history of philosophy is presented.

What is love? When you love somebody then I mean we all want good things to happen to ourselves and keep the bad things at bay. When you love somebody you want that as much for them if not more than you do for yourself.

If you don't exert yourself, or if your exertions don't amount to much of anything, then you might as well not have bothered to have shown up for your existence at all.

What is it precisely, that they are doing when they are doing science. Are they refining their instruments for observation or discovering new aspects of reality?

And then there is Pythagoras. The legend is that the founder of theoretical mathematics was so outraged when one of his students, the haplessly gifted Hippasus, discovered irrational numbers that he sent the poor fellow out on a raft to drown, initiating a venerable tradition of professors mistreating their graduate students.