And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world.

Everyone loves a hero. What we differ on is the question of who the heroes are, because we differ over what matters. And who matters is a function of what matters. [If] what matters is intelligence, the people who matter are the intelligent, and the people who matter the most, the heroes, are the geniuses.

Thinking is the soul speaking to itself.

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.

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

Philosophical progress changes what we take to be "intuitively" obvious, and this change covers up the tracks of the laborious arguments that preceded the changes. We don't see these changes, because we see with them.

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