“You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?”

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59

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Ralph Waldo Emerson727

American philosopher, essayist, and poet 1803–1882

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“Emerson said to him, "Young man, have you read Plato?" Holmes said he hadn't. "You must. You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?'" Holmes said, "That's the lesson of independence." So off he went and read Plato for a few moths or a year, and then wrote a piece doing in Mr. Plato in one of those ephemeral literary things at Harvard. He laid this, as it were, at the feet of Mr. Emerson and awaited the next morning's mail, hoping to get a warm appreciation from Emerson. And the next day and the next and the next — no sign of life. No acknowledgment from Mr. Emerson. Holmes didn't see him again for about a year. When he saw him, this, that, and the other thing was again talked about. Emerson said, "Oh, by the way, I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him."”

Felix Frankfurter (1882–1965) American judge

Holmes said, "That was the second great lesson — humility."
Source: Other writings, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), P. 59.

“I read your piece on Plato. Holmes, when you strike at a king, you must kill him.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Said to a young Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., who had written a piece critical of Plato in response to his earlier conversation with Emerson, as reported by Felix Frankfurter in Harlan Buddington Phillips, Felix Frankfurter Reminisces (1960), p. 59

“I have read in Plato and Cicero sayings that are very wise and very beautiful; but I never read in either of them, "Come unto me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden."”

Aurelius Augustinus (354–430) early Christian theologian and philosopher

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 62

“What is philosophy? This is a notoriously difficult question. One of the easiest ways of answering it is to say that philosophy is what philosophers do, and then point to the writings of Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Hume, Kant, Russell, Wittgenstein, Sartre, and other famous philosophers. However, this answer is unlikely to be of much use to you if you are just beginning the subject, as you probably won’t have read anything by these writers.”

Nigel Warburton (1962) British author and lecturer

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“As the two-thousand-year-old saying goes, you can have eyes and still not see. But a hard life improves vision.”

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“Here you would know and enjoy what posterity will say of Washington. For a thousand leagues have nearly the same effect with a thousand years.”

Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) American author, printer, political theorist, politician, postmaster, scientist, inventor, civic activist, …

Letter to Washington (5 March 1780); reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
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“Congregations must justify their existence. If they only bring people together to be "very much pleased," why, the Lecture Bureaus will contract for all that " Did you worship? Were you edified? Did the Lord speak to you? Did you speak to Him? Do you mean more seriously to be pure, honest, upright, generous, manly, holy, from what you did and heard to-day? " These are the questions which the best part of mankind feel to be proper, and to which we must have affirmative replies.”

John Hall (1829–1898) Presbyterian pastor from Northern Ireland in New York, died 1898

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 146.

“The question is then how can we decide what anybody in the ancient world said. We can't. We wish we could. It would be nice if we could. You would like to think that because you can go to the store and buy an edition of Plato that you are actually reading Plato, but the problem is that we just do not have the kind of evidence that we need in order to establish what ancient authors actually wrote.”

Bart D. Ehrman (1955) American academic

"The Textual Reliability of the New Testament: A Dialogue between Bart Ehrman and Daniel Wallace" (April 4–5, 2008), in The Reliability of the New Testament (2011) edited by Robert Stewart, p. 47

“There’s a thing the children say.
—What do the children say?
—They say: Will you always love me?
—Always.
—Will you always remember me?
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—Will you remember me a year from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me two years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Will you remember me five years from now?
—Yes, I will.
—Knock, knock.
—Who’s there?
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Donald Barthelme (1931–1989) American writer, editor, and professor

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“You always hear people say that philosophy makes no progress and that the same philosophical problems which were already preoccupying the Greeks are still troubling us today. But people who say that do not understand the reason why it has to be so. The reason is that our language has remained the same and always introduces us to the same questions…. I read: "philosophers are no nearer to the meaning of 'Reality' than Plato got,…". What a strange situation. How extraordinary that Plato could have got even as far as he did! Or that we could not get any further! Was it because Plato was so extremely clever?”

Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889–1951) Austrian-British philosopher

Source: Culture and Value (1980), p. 15e

“You must read Plato. But you must hold him at arm's length and say, 'Plato, you have delighted and edified mankind for two thousand years. What have you to say to me?”

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