And what is it, according to Plato, that philosophy is supposed to do? Nothing less than to render violence to our sense of ourselves and our world, our sense of ourselves in the world.

What was tortuously secured by complex argument becomes widely shared intuition, so obvious that we forget its provenance. We don’t see it, because we see with it.

Answers? Forget answers. The spectacle is all in the questions.

We become more worthy the more we bend our minds to the impersonal. We become better as we take in the universe, thinking more about the largeness that it is and laugh about the smallness that is us.

Plato worried that philosophical writing would take the place of living conversations for which, in philosophy, there is no substitute.

Having your husband at a party is like adding anchovies to a salad. I love anchovies, but you can't taste anything else.

To matter, to mind. ... What we mind is in our power, but whether we matter may not be - and there's the tragedy. ... Can anyone truthfully say, I don't matter and I don't mind?

It is an essential feature of the just state that the wealthy be kept away from political power and that the politically powerful be kept away from wealth.

Thinking is the soul speaking to itself.

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.

If we don't understand our tools, then there is a danger we will become the tool of our tools. We think of ourselves as Google's customers, but really we're its products.

War can't bring peace in the world

I read recently that I was born in Arizona. I wasn't born in Arizona. I was born in New Mexico, but I can understand why people might confuse those two Southwestern desert states.

Whatever role we were in our family of birth, we take on this persona and in your 20s and 30s in particular, you end up thinking that's you and that isn't necessarily you.

Genius does not care much for a set of explicit regulations, but that does not mean that genius is lawless.

I'm convinced that our duty to provide advice and consent for justices of the Supreme Court is our most important constitutional responsibility.

Every day I do something that freaks me out.

The most delicate, the most sensible of all pleasures, consists in promoting the pleasure of others.

When you're doing bad things, you just don't know whether you can conquer them or not. I found out how strong I could be when I was motivated, and I'm kind of proud of that.

We play tag and kickball almost every day. It's one of the ways that I've figured out how to spend some fun quality time with my kids while getting exercise.

The world's strongest animals are plant eaters. Gorillas, Buffaloes, Elephants and me.