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.

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

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

Our society is falling back increasingly on rampant consumerism and self-promoting social media as a way for people to feel that their lives matter - self-centered means of numbing the questions of mattering. Culture has relapsed back into the self-aggrandizing, glorifying answers that the Athenians had presumed, which had Socrates railing against them until he got so annoying that they killed him.

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

Almost everybody thinks about philosophy, even if they don't realize it's philosophy and even if they have no sense of the difficulty of the problems, the array of possible answers.

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.