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.

Youth is not an essential, but rather an accidental property. Nobody is in essence young. One either ceases to be or ceases to be young.

That's one of the compensations for being mediocre. One doesn't have to worry about becoming mediocre.

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

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

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.

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.