Plato dramatically puts the detachment of the philosopher from his time this way: to philosophize is to prepare to die.

To matter ... Is there any human will deeper than that? ... We don't want to live when we become convinced that we don't, can't, will never matter. ... We no sooner discover that we are than we desperately want that which we are to matter.

So Socrates was a kind of gadfly. He was a sort of philosophical urban gorilla hanging around in the middle of Athens, asking these peculiar questions of everybody - important people, young men, slaves - questions that had to do with ultimately what's the life that's worth living. And Plato was one of the young men who hung around him, a very aristocratic young man, came from a very old, important family.

What is play and delightful one kind of child is coercion and torture for another, and will not take no matter how much coercion is applied.

From the beginning philosophy sought for The order behind the disorder Thales sipped cheap wine And in this did divine: "Why it's nothing at all but pure water!"

Philosophy addresses, in a systematic and progress-making way, questions of deep concern to everyone.

If we look at our attitudes consistently and work out the logical implications we're on the road to moral progress, moral understanding.