We need science. We need empirical evidence. We can't just use mathematical reasoning to deduce the nature of the world.

I don't think I can write the story of my life, but I can write the story of my hair.

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.

Less money spent on billboards that just make us feel good about ourselves and more on soup kitchens and organized visits to the sick and dying.

Math . . . music .. . starry nights . . . These are secular ways of achieving transcendence, of feeling lifted into a grand perspective. It's a sense of being awed by existence that almost obliterates the self. Religious people think of it as an essentially religious experience but it's not. It's an essentially human experience.

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

What one tries to force into a child against its own nature will never come to good.