Those who share my heroes are, in the deepest sense, of my own kind.

Plato's concern is not just an intellectual issue, but it is knitted with emotional life as well.

It was while I was studying philosophy that I came to understand. . . that it is no sign of moral or spiritual strength to believe that for which one has no evidence, neither a priori evidence as in math, nor a posteriori evidence as in science. . . . It's a violation almost immoral in its transgressiveness to shirk the responsibilities of rationality.

I'm a Spinozist. I believe in reason. I think all the progress that we've made making this a better world have been because of reason and not religion. I think religion has been pulled along by reason and that's why we read The Bible now so differently, even believers.

I was raised in an Orthodox Jewish household and I wouldn't say so much it's informed my views, but it's informed my interest, so I think as a child I was often very baffled by knowledge claims.

It is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.

Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.