Unlike later Neo-Platonists, Plotinus says that our souls are always connected to the universal intellect and that we never really fall away.

Your soul existed before your birth, your soul will exist after your death.

Plotinus is a neo-Platonist, so he would encourage us to go back to Plato.

When you're seeking after bodily pleasure of food and drink for example, this is going to prevent you from doing what you should be doing which is contemplating.

There's going to be this realm of Platonic forms and then there's going to be this single mind, the 'nous', which grasps them.

This condition of uncertainty and unrest in the Roman Empire might explain why at Plotinus' philosophy encourages us to sort of flee from the physical world and towards the world of ideas.

In fact one of the things about Plotinus is that he maybe not singlehandedly, but I think more than anyone else, killed off the variety and dissension among the philosophical schools of antiquity.

We do each have an intellect but there's a universal intellect which is the same for everybody, as it were. And this single intellect is grasping the platonic forms.

We do have intellects and Plotinus controversially thought that even though we might not be aware of it, our souls are always connected to the intellect. They never fully descend as he would put it.

The body is some kind of image of you, it's kind of something that's just attached to your soul, some kind of outside principle, which doesn't really represent who you really are.

The body distracts your soul.

How can I find a way to overcome this?’ is a much better question than ‘Why is my life so bad?’It’s the questions we ask ourselves that will determine how we live our life.

Though I love my country I do not love my countrymen.

I am the common man. I'm polite, I love my family and I play by the rules. And sometimes I get pushed around. That's my lifestyle, and that's what I try to bring to characters.

Myth is someone else's religion.

The country is in tremendous trouble.You know this in North Carolina, because you see what's happening to your jobs, they're disappearing.

The world is complex, dynamic, multidimensiona l; the paper is static, flat. How are we to represent the rich visual world of experience and measurement on mere flatland?

Poverty is the mother of crime.

I speak to you. You speak to me. Is that fragile?

It is common, to esteem most what is most unknown.

I did an instrumental jazz album. That was my first album.