The Founders of Western Thought

Ancient Thinkers

Marble busts of the minds that asked the first questions. They sought truth not for utility, but for its own sake.

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In the shade of olive groves and the marble halls of academies, they gathered to ask the questions that still haunt us: What is justice? What is the good life? What can we know? Their answers laid the foundation of Western civilization.

500–300 BC

Classical Greece

Socrates

469–399 BC · Athens

"The unexamined life is not worth living."

Plato

427–347 BC · Athens

"Be kind, for everyone is fighting a hard battle."

Aristotle

384–322 BC · Stagira

"We are what we repeatedly do."

300–30 BC

Hellenistic Period

Epicurus

341–270 BC · Samos

"Death is nothing to us."

Zeno of Citium

334–262 BC · Cyprus

"Man conquers the world by conquering himself."

100 BC–200 AD

Roman Period

Cicero

106–43 BC · Arpinum

"A room without books is like a body without a soul."

Seneca

4 BC–65 AD · Córdoba

"Luck is what happens when preparation meets opportunity."

Marcus Aurelius

121–180 AD · Rome

"The obstacle is the way."

200–550 AD

Late Antiquity

Plotinus

204–270 AD · Egypt

"The One is all things and no one of them."

Boethius

477–524 AD · Rome

"Nothing is miserable unless you think it so."

I cannot teach anybody anything. I can only make them think.

Socrates