We need science. We need empirical evidence. We can't just use mathematical reasoning to deduce the nature of 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.

The power of our country relies on the character that comes out of each of our homes.

Big dreams create the magic that stir men's souls to greatness.

What is American music? The most satisfying answer I've come across is that it was a kind of natural comfort with the vernacular which is diverse and regional; it's not one particular set of sounds.

The great virtue, I think, of studying Aristotle - and, more importantly, taking him seriously as a possible teacher - is that he presents an alternative view of both science and the world.

A guy isn't the only thing that will make me happy. If I never find romance or love, that will be okay. It's what I want, but it doesn't define me.

Old age transfigures or fossilizes.

I think we all have a similar philosophy about comedy and comic performance which is that it's at its best when you can see the pleasure the performer has, when you can see a glimmer in the eye.

I think hair is just, like, the most important thing about you.

The lifting up of the woman does not require the tearing down of the man. In fact, a strong woman appreciates a strong man. Conversely, a strong man is not intimidated by a strong woman.

When asked by an anthropologist what the Indians called America before the white men came, an Indian said simply "Ours.