It is frequently noted (especially around here) that the original meaning of philosophy is philos sophia, ‘love of wisdom’, and that this definition greatly informed how the Greeks practiced the discipline in its earliest days. Therefore, it is sometimes claimed, philosophy today is defined by ‘love of wisdom’ and must pursue similar goals and proceed by similar means as it did in its earliest days…
The sacred texts of Hermeticism, the Corpus Hermeticum, were a key component of the renaissance occult tradition. They were authored by Hermes Trismegistus, a mythical figure who was supposedly an Egyptian priest and coeval of Moses. As such, the Corpus Hermeticum was considered by renaissance scholar-magicians to be as significant and authoritative as any ancient religious texts, including the Bible. This story, however, did not hold up …
As reported in Xenophon’s Symposium, Socrates and Critobulus engaged in 
a discussion of beauty. Socrates, quite famously no beauty himself, was described in Plato’s Theaetetus as having “a snub nose and projecting eyes”. Yet the philosopher did not consider his physical deficiencies a problem; rather, he argued that his flared nostrils enhanced his sense of smell and his bulging eyes gave him enhanced peripheral vision …
Here are a couple of quotes that fit in with the general ethic of this site. First, the words with which Karl Popper began his classic study The Open Society and Its Enemies:
In his posthumous work On Certainty, Ludwig Wittgenstein made a number of statments regarding the possiblity/impossibility of travelling to the moon. There is no small amount of confusion about his comments amongst philosophers, due in part to Wittgenstein making more than one reference to moon travel …
In his Second Treatise of Civil Government John Locke claims that ninety-nine percent of the value derived from land come from the labour invested in it. The following is an argument he uses to elaborate on this point:
There cannot be a clearer demonstration of any thing, than several nations of the Americans are of this, who are rich in land, and poor in all the comforts of life; whom nature having furnished as liberally as any other people, with the materials of plenty, i.e. a fruitful soil, apt to produce in abundance, what might serve for food, raiment, and delight; yet for want of improving it by labour, have not one hundredth part of the conveniencies we enjoy …