It's very important to remember that the philosophers were social dissidents. They were social critics. The man in the street or woman in the street did not particularly cherish what they said. Socrates was killed.

It's something that's very often said that philosophy, as opposed to science, never makes any progress.

Philosophical thinking that doesn't do violence to one's settled mind is no philosophical thinking at all.

In order to refute a conclusion, you have to put forth the best possible argument for it.

One of the peculiar features of philosophical questions is how eager people are to offer solutions that miss the point of the questions. Sometimes these failed solutions are scientific, and sometimes they are religious, and sometimes they are based on what is called plain common sense.

What is remarkable about the Greeks - even pre-philosophically - is that despite the salience of religious rituals in their lives, when it came to the question of what it is that makes an individual human life worth living they didn't look to the immortals but rather approached the question in mortal terms. Their approaching the question of human mattering in human terms is the singularity that creates the conditions for philosophy in ancient Greece, most especially as these conditions were realized in the city-state of Athens.

Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.