Thinking is the soul speaking to itself.

Philosophers feel a little more cautious about letting down their technical guard lest the general public doesn't recognize their special credentials. It's the fact that philosophy is of general interest that, paradoxically, keeps philosophers from wanting to speak in a way that's accessible to the general public.

The good polis is made by the good person, his moral character intact, and the good polis, in turn, helps turn out good persons, their moral character intact.

One of the interesting things about the ancient Greeks is that they really didn't have our conception of individual rights. They didn't have our conception of all lives matters. And it was really was true for them, that certain lives matter a lot more than others. It didn't dawn on them that all lives, although different, can be lives of equal mattering. And that is actually something a huge ethical lesson.

In fact, the answers that religion, as we have come to know it, provides to the question of human worth have played so dominant a role in the preceding centuries that believers often cannot conceive how non-believers can muster sufficient commitment to their own lives to get out of bed each morning, let alone the ethical wherewithal to regard others as deserving of moral regard. Once one "comes out" as an atheist, these are the inquisitions to which one is often subjected.

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.

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