Almost everybody thinks about philosophy, even if they don't realize it's philosophy and even if they have no sense of the difficulty of the problems, the array of possible answers.

A child's natural form of behavior is play, and in our aim to educate, play should be honored and preserved for as long past childhood as can be.

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.

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

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.

Children, who have so much to learn in so short a time, had involved the tendency to trust adults to instruct them in the collective knowledge of our species, and this trust confers survival value. But it also makes children vulnerable to being tricked and adults who exploit this vulnerability should be deeply ashamed.

Does God have a reason for wanting us to be charitable, to take care of those who can't take care of themselves? Either God does or God doesn't, it's just logic. If God has a reason then there is a reason independent of God and whatever God's reason is we should figure it out for ourselves. There is a reason and God doesn't really ground morality at all. God wants us to give charity because it's the right thing to do.