“[Socrates] was the perfect Orphic saint... a man very sure of himself, high-minded, indifferent to worldly success, believing that he is guided by a divine voice, and persuaded that clear thinking is the most important requisite for right living.”

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“[William] refused altogether to follow his brother Henry into fastidious snobbishness.”

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“A man may be a cheerful pessimist or a melancholy optimist. Perhaps Samuel Butler may serve as an example of the first; Plotinus is an admirable example of the second.”

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“A witty, skilled, and highly skilled writer... Erasmus was incurably and unashamedly literary... he lived too long, into an age of new virtues and new vices—heroism and intolerance—neither of which he could acquire.”

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“According to the mystics, every text of the Koran has 7 or 70 or 700 layers of interpretation, the literal meaning being only for the ignorant vulgar… they believed that the populace should take the Koran literally but wise people need not do so.”

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“After the Middle Ages, the Jews still contributed largely to civilization as individuals, but no longer as a race.”

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“All the land belonged to the Spartans, who, however were forbidden by law and custom to cultivate it themselves, both on the ground that such labor was degrading, and in order that they might always be free for military service.”

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“Almost all the hypotheses that have dominated modern philosophy were first thought of by the Greeks… they gave birth to theories that have had an independent life and though at first infantile, have proved capable of serving and developing though more than 2000 years; their imaginative inventiveness in abstract matters can hardly be too highly praised.”

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“Anaxagoras was the first to introduce philosophy to the Athenians, the first to suggest mind as the primary cause of physical changes... and one of the influences that helped to form Socrates.”

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“Arabic philosophy is not important as original thought… Mohammedan civilization in its great days was admirable in the arts and an many technical ways, but it showed no capacity for independent speculation in theoretical matters. It’s import—which must not be underrated—is as a transmitter.”

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“Averroes is more important in Christian than in Mohammedan philosophy. In the latter he was a dead end; in the former, a beginning… [he] regarded religion as containing philosophic truth in allegorical form.”

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“Averroes was accused of cultivating the philosophy of the ancients at the expense of the true faith. All the books that could be found on logic and metaphysics were given to the flames and Muslim philosophy in Spain ended with Averroes; and in the rest of the Mohammedan world a rigid orthodoxy put an end to speculation.”

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“Avicenna spent his life in the sort of places that one used to think only exist it poetry. Even more famous in medicine than in philosophy and with a passion for wine and women, he was suspect to the orthodox but befriended by princes on account of his medical skill

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“Babylonian religion—unlike that of Egypt—was more concerned with prosperity in this world than with happiness in the next. Magic, divination, and astrology were more developed there than elsewhere… From Babylon come some thing that belong to science: the division of the day into 24 hours, and of the circle into 360 degrees; also the discovery of a cycle in eclipses which enabled lunar eclipses to be predicted with certainty”

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“Buddhism, at this time, was a vigorous proselytizing religion. Ashoka, the saintly Buddhist king, records, in a still extant inscription, that he sent missionaries to all the Macedonian kings”

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“By self-interest, Man has become gregarious, but in instinct he has remained to a great extent solitary; hence the need of religion and morality to reinforce self-interest... The mystic becomes one with God, and feels himself absolved from duty to his neighbor.”

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“Considered purely as a philosopher, Marx has grave shortcomings. He is too practical, too much wrapped up in the problems of his time… It is only because of the belief in the inevitability of progress that Marx thought it possible to dispense with ethical considerations… Marx professed himself an atheist, but retained a cosmic optimism which only theism could justify… He hopes for little from persuasion, everything from the class war. He is committed in practice to power politics.”

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“Contact with the Mohammedans in Spain, and to a lesser extent in Sicily, made the West aware of Aristotle; also of Arabic numerals, algebra, and chemistry... words we derive from Arabic such as: algebra, alcohol, alchemy, alembic, alkali, azimuth, zenith.”

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“Dante, though as a poet he was a great innovator, was, as a thinker, somewhat behind the times. His thought is interesting but it was not influential, and was hopelessly out of date.”

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“Descartes is usually considered the founder of modern philosophy, and, I think, rightly. He is the first man of high philosophic capacity whose outlook is profoundly affected by the new physics and astronomy... he does not accept foundations laid by predecessors, but endeavors to construct a complete philosophic edifice de novo. This had not happened since Aristotle... There is a freshness about his work that is not to be found in any eminent previous philosopher since Plato... Descartes writes, not as a teacher, but as a discoverer and explorer”

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“Descartes was a philosopher, a mathematician, and a man of science. In philosophy and mathematics, his work was of supreme importance... he resolved to make himself doubt everything that he could manage to doubt.”

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“Every community is faced with two dangers, anarchy and despotism... This led Locke to the doctrine of division of powers, and of checks and balances.”

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“Everyone knows that 'mind' is what an idealist thinks there is nothing else but, and 'matter' is what a materialist thinks the same about... the 'mind' to which a given mental event belongs is the group of events connected with the given event by memory-chains, backwards or forwards... a mind and a piece of matter are, each of them, a group of events.”

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“For the only eminent disciple of Epicurus, Lucretius, hardly any other great poet has had to wait so long for recognition. But in modern times, his merits have been almost universally acknowledged. For example, he and Benjamin Franklin were Shelley's favorite authors.”

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“Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau; Roosevelt and Churchill, that of Locke... Liberty is the nominal goal of Rousseau's thought, but in fact it is equality that he values, and he seeks to secure even at the expense of liberty.”

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“Hitler is an outcome of Rousseau.”

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“Hobbes is a philosopher whom it is difficult to classify... He is completely free from superstition... He is clear and logical... he is the first really modern writer on political theory... To occupy his leisure, he wrote, at 84, an autobiography in Latin verse, and published, at 87, a translation of Homer.”

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“Hume's philosophy represents the bankruptcy of 18th century reasonableness... It was inevitable that such a self-refutation of rationality should be followed by a great outburst of irrational faith. Rousseau was mad but influential; Hume was sane but had no followers.”

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“In 1651, he published the Leviathan, it pleased no one Its rationalism offended most of the refugees, and its bitter attacks on the Catholic huh offended the French government... There is not a word in Leviathan to suggest any relation between [states] except war and conquest... Every argument that he adduces in favor of government, in so far as it is valid at all, is valid in favor of international government. So long as national States exist and fight each other, only inefficiency can preserve the human race. To improve the fighting quality of separate States without having any means of preventing war is the road to universal destruction.”

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“In all history, nothing is so surprising or so difficult to account for as the sudden rise of civilization in Greece. What they achieved in art and literature is familiar to everybody, but what they did in the purely intellectual realm is even more exceptional… Deductive reasoning from general premises was a Greek innovation… they speculated freely about the nature of the world and the ends of life, without being bound in the fetter of any inherited orthodoxy. What occurred was so astonishing that—until very recent time—men were content to gape and talk mystically about the Greek genius.”

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“It does not occur to Nietzsche as possible that a man should genuinely feel universal love, obviously because he himself feels almost universal hatred and fear... it never occurred to him that the lust for power, with which he endows his superman, is itself an outcome of fear.”

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“It is not the psychology of the romantics that is at fault: it is their standard of values. They admire strong passions, of no matter what kind... hence the type of man encouraged by romanticism is violent and anti-social, an anarchic rebel or a conquering tyrant.”

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“It is the excellence of Plato as a writer of fiction that throws doubt on him as an historian.”

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“Kant, like Darwin, gave rise to a movement which he would have detested... The stages in the evolution of ideas have... developed by steps that each seem natural, into their opposites... governed throughout by external circumstances and the reflection of these circumstances in human emotions.”

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“Kindi, the first to write philosophy in Arabic, and the only philosopher of note who was himself an Arab... introduced great confusion into Arabic ideas of Aristotle, from which it took Arabic philosophy centuries to recover.”

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“Leibniz was one of the supreme intellects of all time, but as a human being he was not admirable... he was wholly destitute of those higher philosophic virtues... What he proclaimed was optimistic, orthodox, fantastic, and shallow... unpublished in his desk... profound, coherent, largely Spinozistic, and amazingly logical.”

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“logic and theory of knowledge had become dependent on metaphysics and theology. Occam set to work to separate them again... [his] political works are written in the style of philosophic disputations, with arguments for and against , sometimes not reaching any conclusion.”

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“Mary Shelley's Frankenstein... contains what might be regarded as an allegorical prophetic history of the development of romanticism.”

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“More scientific than Parmenides, Plato, and Aristotle… The originality of Empedocles' originality, outside science, consists in the doctrine of the four elements and in the use of the two principles of Life and Strife to explain change.”

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“Most sciences, at their inception, have been connected with some form of false belief, which gave them a fictitious value. Astronomy was connected with astrology, chemistry with alchemy.”

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“Omar Kyayyam, the only man known to me who was both a poet and a mathematician, reformed the calendar in 1079. His best friend, oddly endough, was the founder of the sect of the Assassins, the 'Old Man of the Mountain' of legendary fame.”

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“Orthodox Judaism became more orthodox and more narrow after the fall of Jerusalem. After the first century, Christianity also crystallized and the relations of Judaism and Christianity were wholly hostile and external... Christianity powerfully stimulated anti-Semitism.”

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“Plato was most important to early Christianity, Aristotle to the medieval Church; but when, after the Renaissance, men began to value political freedom, it was above all to Plutarch that they turned. His influence profoundly influenced 18th century English and French liberals, the founders of the USA, the romantic movement in Germany, and German thought down to the present day.”

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“Plato's most important dialogue, The Republic consists in the construction of an ideal commonwealth, the earliest of Utopias. One of the conclusions arrived at is that the rulers must be philosophers... If this is true, we must decide what constitutes a philosopher, and the consequent discussion is the most famous part of The Republic, and has perhaps been the most influential.”

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“Plotinus is both an end and a beginning—an end as regards the Greeks, a beginning as regards Christendom... [He was] the founder of Neoplatonism and the last of the great philosophers of antiquity... He represents better than any other philosopher, an important type of theory... subjectivism invaded men's feelings as well as their doctrines.”

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“Pythagoras is one of the most interesting and puzzling men in history… a combination of Einstein and Mrs. Eddy, he was intellectually one of the most important men that ever lived… I do not know of any other man who has been as influential”

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“Pythagoras, like Saint Francis, preached to animals. In the society that he founded, men and women were admitted on equal terms; property was held in common, and there was a common way of life.”

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“Regarded as the greatest of scholastic philosophers in the battle for Aristotle against Plato, there is little of the true philosophic spirit in Aquinas. Before he begins to philosophize, he believes he already knows the truth. I cannot, therefore, feel that he deserves to be put on a level with the best philosophers either of Greece or of modern times.”

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“Rousseau, not unnaturally, had come to suffer from the persecution mania which ultimately drove him insane... But in the end his delusions won the day and he fled. His last years were spent in Paris in great poverty, and when he died suicide was suspected.”

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“Santayana also liked religion, but in a very different way. He liked it aesthetically and historically, not as a help towards a moral life... He did not intellectually accept any of the Christian dogmas, but he was content that others should believe them, and himself appreciated what he regarded as the Christian myth.”

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“Schopenhauer is in many ways peculiar among philosophers... a pessimist, not fully academic, as much interested in art as ethics, unusually free from nationalism... His appeal has always been less to professional philosophers than to artistic and literary people in search of a philosophy that they could believe.”

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“The age of Pericles was the happiest and most glorious time in the history of Athens... These achievements are perhaps the most astonishing thing in all history.”

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“The ancient law giver was a benevolent myth; the modern law giver is a terrifying reality. The world has become more like that of Machiavelli than it was, and the modern man who hope to refute his philosophy must think more deeply than seemed necessary in the 19th century.”

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“The belief in a happy 'state of nature' in the remote past is derived partly from the biblical narrative of the age of the patriarchs, partly from the classical myth of a golden age. The general belief in the badness of the remote past only came with the doctrine of evolution.”

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“The close connection between virtue and knowledge is characteristic of Socrates and Plato, in all Greek thought, as opposed to that of Christianity. In Christian ethics, a pure heart is essential, and is at least as likely to found among the ignorant as among the learned. This difference between Greek and Christian ethics has persisted down to the present day.”

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“The criminals with whom Dostoevsky associated were better than he was, because they were more self-respecting... he would have nothing to do with 'proper pride'; he would sin in order to repent and enjoy the luxury of confession... I agree with Nietzsche in thinking Dostoevsky's prostration contemptible.”

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“The Cynics despised worldly goods, and showed their contempt by eschewing the comforts of civilization; this is the same point of view that led Socrates to go barefoot and ill-clad.”

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“The doctrine of the perpetual flux, as taught by Heraclitus, is painful, and science can do nothing to refute it.”

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“the historical truth that man is by nature oppressor and oppressed, and that it is only slowly by law, education, and the spirit of love in the world that men can be made happy and free.”

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“The myth is of even more importance, historically, than the reality... For the reality was the source of the myth.”

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“The religions of Egypt and Babylonia were originally fertility cults… In Babylon, Ishtar, the earth-goddess, was supreme among female divinities. Throughout western Asia, the Great Mother was worshipped under various names. Greek colonists named her Artemis… Christianity transformed her into the Virgin Mary, and it was Council at Ephesus that legitimated the title Mother of God”

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“The sole business of a Spartan citizen was war, to which he was trained from birth... There was no nonsense about cultural or scientific education; the sole aim was to produce good soldiers, wholly devoted to the state.”

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“The Stoics held that supreme good is virtue, and that a man cannot be deprived of virtue by outside causes; this doctrine is implicit in the contention of Socrates that his judges cannot harm him.”

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“The Sufi sect allowed itself great latitude in the mystical and allegorical interpretation of orthodox dogma; it was more less Neoplatonic.”

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“The temper of the romantics is best studied in fiction. They liked what was strange: ghosts, ancient decayed castles, the last melancholy descendants of once-great families, practitioners of mesmerism and the occult sciences, falling tyrants and levantine pirates.”

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“To Musset, it was only after Napoleon that Byron and Goethe were the greatest geniuses of the century... To Carlyle, Goethe and Byron were antitheses; to Alfred de Musset, they were accomplices in the wicked work of instilling the poisoning of melancholy into the cheerful Gallic soul.”

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“What Galileo and Newton were to the 17th century, Darwin was the the 19th... Darwin himself was a liberal, but his theories had consequences in some degree inimical to traditional liberalism... like Kant [he] gave rise to a movement which he would have detested.”

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“What subsequent philosophy, down to quite modern times, accepted from Parmenides, was not the impossibility of all change, which was too violent a paradox, but the indestructibility of substance.”

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“Xenophanes has his place in the succession of rationalists who were opposed to the mystical tendencies of Pythagoras and others, but as an independent thinker he is not in the first rank.”

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“Xenophon, a military man, not very liberally endowed with brains, and on the whole conventional in his outlook... his ideas so far from being subversive, were rather dull and commonplace.”

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