What do you need to succeed in business? You need the ability to think critically and communicate, and those things you can get just as easily out of a philosophy degree.

I don't have an M.B.A. I have a doctoral degree in philosophy - nineteenth-century German philosophy, to be precise.

I'd like the United States to become what it was always meant to be, which is a secular nation - more publicly committed to reason, to improving understanding, and promoting education.

During the seven years that I worked as a management consultant, I spent a lot of time trying to look older than I was. I became pretty good at furrowing my brow and putting on somber expressions.

My father worked with a first-grade education in this country and managed every single day without a hiccup.

I think of my own work as part of a decades-long conversation about books and reading with people I will mainly never meet.

I get up, and boy, I can't wait to paint and study music and keep learning. I just love it.

I was a library rat and a bookworm. I read all the time. I walked to school reading books. I read under my desk.