Given cognitive vulnerabilities, it would be convenient to have an arrangement whereby reality could tell us off; and that is precisely what science is. Scientific methodology is the arrangement that allows reality to answer us back.

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

Mother' is not an identity one can just try on for size.

And then there is Pythagoras. The legend is that the founder of theoretical mathematics was so outraged when one of his students, the haplessly gifted Hippasus, discovered irrational numbers that he sent the poor fellow out on a raft to drown, initiating a venerable tradition of professors mistreating their graduate students.

Everybody is struggling to refine their views in opposition to the other people. And that's one of the most important things that philosophy actually has to teach us that you have to air your views and bring them to the table with people - with whom you disagree very much.

Having your husband at a party is like adding anchovies to a salad. I love anchovies, but you can't taste anything else.

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