If the body had been easier to understand, nobody would have thought that we had a mind.

To abjure the notion of the truly human is to abjure the attempt to divinize the self as a replacement for a divinized world.

National pride is to countries what self-respect is to individuals: a necessary condition for self-improvement.

The usual picture of Socrates is of an ugly little plebeian who inspired a handsome young nobleman to write long dialogues on large topics.

There are credentials for admission to our democratic society [...]. You have to be educated in order to be a participant in our conversation So we are going to go right on trying to discredit you in the eyes of your children, trying to strip your fundamentalist religious community of dignity, trying to make your views seem silly rather than discussable. We are not so inclusivist as to tolerate intolerance such as yours.

"True" resembles... a compliment paid to sentences that seem to be paying their way and that fit in with other sentences which are doing so.

You read the pragmatists and all you know is: not Descartes, not Kant, not Plato. It's like aspirin. You can't use aspirin to give yourself power, you take it to get rid of headaches. In that way, pragmatism is a philosophical therapy. It helps you stop asking the unhelpful questions.