". . . philosophy [the child] should honor above all else. . . .[I]t is a fine thing to voyage about and view many cities, but profitable to dwell only in the best one." --Plutarch, The Education of Children.

"Wise man was he who counselled that Speculation should have free course, and look fearlessly toward all the thirty-two points of the compass, whithersoever and howsoever it listed." Thomas Carlyle, Sartor Resartus

"If you intend a boy to live with gods," said Antisthenes, "teach him philosophy; if with men, rhetoric."

Philosophia biou kibernetes--"Philosophy the Guide of Life, [translation of the Greek motto on Phi Beta Kappa keys]

"To one who protested that he was ill adapted for the study of philosophy, he said, "Why then do you live, if you do not care to live well?" --Diogenes Laertius, Diogeness

"Though you are not Socrates, you ought to live as one seeking to be a Socrates."--Epictetus

"[W]hen Leon the tyrant asked Pythagoras who he was, he responded 'A philosopher,' and he compared life to the Great Games, where some went to compete for the prize and others went with wares to sell, but the best went as spectators; for similarly in life, some of us grow up with servile natures, greedy for fame and gain, but the philosopher seeks for truth." --Diogenes Laertius, Pythagoras.

"[Plato's] is a doctrine of hope, not of despair. Let us see whether we do not come more and more into agreement in proportion as we think clearly; if, and insofar as we do, we keep acquiring confidence in our individual reason as having a common or universal nature."--Charles M. Bakewell, editor's Introduction to Plato, The Republic.

"I will say nothing of philosophy other than that it has been studied for many centuries by the most outstanding minds without having produced anything which is not in dispute . . . . I had discovered in college that one cannot imagine anything so strange and unbelievable but that it has been upheld by some philosopher. . . [Philosophy only] teaches us to talk with an appearance of truth about all things, and to make ourselves admired by the less learned." Rene Descartes

"Neither do they think the divergence of opinion between philosophers is any reason for abandoning the study of philosophy, since at that rate we should have to give up life altogether: so said Posidonius in his exhortations." --Diogenius Laertius, Zeno.

"My son is taking a course in philosophy, and last night we were looking at something by Spinoza and there was the most childish reasoning! There were all these attributes, and Substances, and all this meaningless chewing around, and we started to laugh. Now how could we do that? Here's this great Dutch philosopher, and we're laughing at him. It's because there's no excuse for it! In the same period there was Newton, there was Harvey studying the circulation of the blood, there were people with methods of analysis by which progress was being made! You can take every one of Spinoza's propositions, and take the contrary propositions, and look at the world and you can't tell which is right." Richard P. Feynman, The Pleasure of Finding Things Out

"Well, on reading all these authors, I did not find much fault with them for their lying, as I saw that this was already a common practice even among men who profess philosophy." --Lucian, A True Story.

"To make light of philosophy is to be a true philosopher." --Blaise Pascal.

"I am weary of contemplating nations from the lowest and most beastly degradations of human Life, to the highest refinement of civilization: I am weary of philosophers, theologians, politicians, and historians. They are masses of absurdities, vices and lies. John Adams, letter to Thomas Jefferson.

"Every man seeks for truth; but God only knows who has found it. It is, therefore, as unjust to persecute as it is absurd to ridicule people for those several opinions which they cannot help entertaining upon the conviction of their reason." --Earl of Chesterfield, Letters and Maxims of Lord Chesterfield.

"[Modern] philosophy has now long been the preoccupation of teachers in academies, arguing about the words they expressly invent and the problems they professionally create." Irwin Edman, Philosopher's Holiday

"There can be nothing more destructive of true education than to spend long hours in the acquirement of ideas and methods which lead nowhere. It is fatal to intellectual vitality. It produces, on the one hand, a sense of incompetance, of lack of grasp, and of inability really to penetrate to the true meaning of things; and, on the other hand by a natural revolt of the self-respecting intellect, it produces a distaste for ideas, and suspicion that they are all equally futile." Alfred North Whitehead, A Philosopher Looks at Science

"If it were acceptable in a work of modern scholarship to rise with indignation in the defense of one's country, I would begin this book with a simple call to arms: it is time to take America back. It is time to take it back from the literary critics, philosophers, and self-styled postmodern thinkers who have made the very name 'America' a symbol for that which is grotesque, obscene, monstrous, stultifying, stunted, leveling, deadening, deracinating, deforming, rootless, uncultured, and--always in quotation marks--'free.' I would ride from lecture hall to lecture hall warning my fellow citizens of the attack being launched against them and sounding the alarm: 'One if by modern philosophy, two if by literary criticism!'" Jim Ceaser, Reconstructing America

"With respect to luxuries and comforts, the wisest have ever lived a more simple life than the poor. . . . Of a life of luxury the fruit is luxury, whether in agriculture, or commerce, or literature, or art. There are nowadays professors of philosophy, but no philosophers. . . .A lady once offered me a mat, but as I had no room to spare in the house, nor time to spare within or without to hake it, I declined it, preferring to wipe my feet on the sod before my door. It is best to avoid the beginnings of evil." --Henry David Thoreau, Walden

"For he went on to praise philosophy and the freedom that it gives, and to ridicule the things that are popularly called blessings-- wealth and reputation, dominion and honor, yes and purple and gold-- things accounted very desirable by most men and till then by me also. I took it all in with eager, wide-open soul . . . . [t]hen I felt hurt because he had criticized what was dearest to me-- wealth and money and reputation--and I all but cried over their downfall." --Lucian, The Wisdom of Nigrinus.

[The philosophers] " . . . collecting lads who are easy to hoodwink, they rant about their insoluble fallacies; and in the presence of their disciples they always sing the praise of restraint and temperance and self-sufficiency and spit at wealth and pleasure, but when they are by themselves, how can one describe how much they eat, how much they indulge their passions and how they lick the filth off pennies?" --Lucian, Icaromenippus.

[among the followers of Plotinus] ". . . there was also Rogatianus, a Senator, who advanced so far in renunciation of public life that he gave up all his property, dismissed all his servants, and resigned his rank . . . . He would not even keep his own house to live in, but went the round of his friends and acquaintances, dining at one house and sleeping at another (but he only ate every other day). As a result of the renunciation and indifference to the needs of life, though he had been so gouty that he had to be carried in a chair, he regained his health and, though he had not been able to stretch out his hands, he came to be able to use them much more easily than professional artisans. Plotinus regarded him with great favor and praised him highly, and frequently held him up as an example to all who practiced philosophy." --Porphyry, On The Life of Plotinus.

"Although [Marcus Aurelius] was the most powerful man in the western world, although he was necessarily the richest and could have been the most utterly wolfish, hedonistic, lazy, irresponsible, and depraved character of his generation, instead he dedicated his life to cultivating pure intellect, to expunging all emotion from his soul, to ignoring Time and the present moment in order to fix his gaze on Eternity, to crushing out those liars, fear and hope, and those deceivers, pleasure and pain, and to thinking of happiness only in the cool dry satisfaction of having had a thought or having completed an act which was perfectly in tune with the vast activity of that infinitely superhuman mind, the universe." Gilbert Highet The Philosopher on the Throne

"The philosopher converses only with thoughts or with truths abstracted from all personal relations. He considers man as an object of study and not as an object of affection. But in the actual world nature as we say is too strong for us and we are compelled to love and to hate, to go with the tide of men's opinions and see things colored by our partialities; we hug our little local prejudices, we exaggerate trifles and become slaves of our love of comfort and use." --Ralph Waldo Emerson.

"Thus singularly did [Shakespeare] unite the faculties of Poet and Philosopher. But had Shakespear possessed only these faculties he might have still been thrust by the derision of the world into the class of mere contemplators and visionaries with Pyrrho, Plato, Plotinus, Kant, with students and philosophers, whom however they may be reverenced after they are dead, when alive the world bows aside as amiable enthusiasts whose speculations tend to no human purpose. These however deal in the real world of truths, of thoughts and slight the apparent world and are slighted by it." --Ralph Waldo Emerson

"To a philosopher all news, as it is called, is gossip, and they who edit and read it are old women over their tea." --Henry David Thoreau, Walden.

"But whither is senile garrulity leading me? Into politics, of which I have taken final leave. I think little of them and say less. I have given up newspapers in exchange for Tacitus and Thucydides, for Newton and Euclid; and I find myself much the happier." Thomas Jefferson, letter to John Adams Jan. 21, 1812

"Minds devoted exclusively to speculation lose the sense of what action requires."--Charles de Gaulle, The Edge of the Sword.

"The theorist has a hard time to make his way in the world. He is supposed to be indifferent to realities; yet his life is spent in the exposure of realities which, till illuminated by his searchlight, were hidden and unknown. He is contrasted, and to his great disfavor, with the strenuous man of action, who ploughs or builds or navigates or trades, yet, in moments of meditation he takes the consoling knowledge to his heart that the action of his favored brothers would be futile unless informed and inspired by thoughts that come from him. Of the lot of all theorists, that of the philosopher is sorriest . . . A troublesome lot, these men who are always searching for the ultimate. If we cannot understand, let us show the superiority is ours by combining to deride." --Judge Benjamin Cardozo, The Growth of the Law

 "But I regard as perfect, so far as men can be, those who are able to combine political capacity and philosophy; and I am inclined to think that these are secure in the possession of two things which are of the greatest good: a life useful to the world in their public position, and the calm and untroubled life in their pursuit of philosophy." --Plutarch, The Education of Children.

"Since the philosophers are those who are capable of apprehending that which is eternal and unchanging, while those who are incapable of this and lose themselves and wander about the multiplicities of various things, are not philosophers, which of the two ought to be leaders of the state? . . . [Yet] Can you name any other type or ideal of life that looks with scorn upon political office except the life of true philosophers? . . . What we require, [Socrates] said, is that those who take office should not be lovers of rule. Otherwise there would be a contest of rival lovers. Plato, Republic

"The Germans are philosophers and have the intellectual's unhappy penchant for consistency . . . A whole new school of political thought has been developed in recent years with the avowed purpose of discrediting democracy. Democracy, it is declared, is an illusion of the Age of Reason and nothing is so completely at discount today in Germany as the thought of the eighteenth century. According to this new school, democracy is rationalistic and individualistic. It believes that society is established by a social contract between individuals. . .whereas, the individual is organic to society from the beginning. This organic relationship of the individual to society cannot be expressed in terms of democracy. It can be expressed only the symbol, of the leader's authority over his people." Reinhold Niebuhr, The Germans, Unhappy Philosophers in Politics (1933).

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust. The elective mode of obtaining rulers is the characteristic policy of republican government. The means relied upon in this form for preventing their degeneracy are numerous and various. The most effectual one, is such a limitation of the term of appointments as will maintain a proper responsibility to the people." Publius (Madison or Hamilton), Federalist 57.

"What separates the men from the boys in politics is that the boys want high office in order to be somebody; the men want high office in order to do something. . . .Politics is a necessary evil to get the position you need to affect the course of events. It's usually a brawl." --Richard Nixon, Leaders

[Virtues of a politician:] "To know perfectly the constitution, and form of government, of every nation; the growth and decline of ancient and modern empires. . . [t]o know the strength, the riches, and the commerce of each country . . . [also] dexterity enough to conceal the truth, without telling a lie; sagacity enough to read other people's countenances: and serenity enough not to let them discover anything by yours; a seeming frankness, with a real reserve. These are the rudiments of a politician; the world must be your grammar." --Earl of Chesterfield, Letters and Maxims of Lord Chesterfield.

"Now if [the philosopher] should be required to [return to the cave] and contend with these perpetual prisoners while his vision was still dim and before his eyes were accustomed to the dark--and the time required for habituation would not be very short--would he not provoke laughter, and would not it be said of him that he had returned from his journey aloft with his eyes ruined and that it was not worthwhile even to attempt the descent? And if it were possible to lay hands on and to kill the man who tried to release them and lead them up, would they not kill him?" Plato, Republic.

Miranda:
O wonder!
How many goodly creatures are there here!
How beauteous mankind is! O brave new world
That has such people in't!

Prospero:
'Tis new to thee.

--William Shakespeare, The Tempest