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.

God doesn't help. I think that's a knockdown argument. I think that it really shows that whatever moral knowledge we have and whatever moral progress we make in our knowledge or whatever progress we make in our moral knowledge is not coming really from religion. It's coming from the very hard work really of moral philosophy, of trying to ground our moral reasonings.

In fact, it’s the very impersonality of impersonal knowledge that renders such knowledge the most ethically potent of all.

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

I don't only act out of my character; my character reacts to my actions. Each time I why, even if I'm not caught, I become a little bit more of this ugly thing: a liar. Character is always in the making, with each morally valenced action, whether right or wrong, affecting our characters, the people who we are.

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

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