Al-Kindi
Al-Kindi was a ninth-century philosopher active in the Abbasid intellectual world.
Explore their story →Meet the authors
Discover the lives and ideas behind the words, then follow them into a journey.
Aristotle
Born in Stagira in 384 BCE, Aristotle studied at Plato’s Academy and later established the Lyceum in Athens.
Explore their story →Ashoka
Ashoka was a third-century BCE Mauryan ruler.
Explore their story →Carl Rogers
Carl Rogers was an American psychologist whose work helped establish the person-centered approach.
Explore their story →Confucius
Confucius, known in Chinese as Kongzi (traditionally 551–479 BCE), asked how people could live well together in a world troubled by rivalry and failing leadership.
Explore their story →Emily Dickinson
Emily Dickinson was born in Amherst, Massachusetts, in 1830.
Explore their story →Epictetus
Epictetus lived under the Roman Empire and experienced enslavement before becoming a free man and a teacher.
Explore their story →Henry David Thoreau
Thoreau was a New England writer, naturalist, and participant in American transcendentalism.
Explore their story →Ibn Rushd
Ibn Rushd (1126–1198), known in Latin as Averroes, was an Andalusi jurist, physician and philosopher born in Cordoba.
Explore their story →John Dewey
John Dewey (1859–1952) was an American philosopher and educator associated with pragmatism.
Explore their story →John Donne
John Donne was an English poet and Anglican cleric, remembered as a major metaphysical poet.
Explore their story →John Keats
John Keats was an English Romantic poet whose brief life ended in 1821.
Explore their story →John Stuart Mill
John Stuart Mill (1806–1873) was a British philosopher and reformer.
Explore their story →Kabir
Kabir is traditionally remembered as a fifteenth-century poet and weaver of northern India.
Explore their story →Kahlil Gibran
Gibran was a writer and visual artist who worked across Arabic and English and lived much of his life in the United States.
Explore their story →Kakuzō Okakura
Okakura was a Japanese scholar, writer, and museum curator, also known as Okakura Tenshin.
Explore their story →Kenkō
Kenkō, also known as Yoshida Kenkō, was a medieval Japanese writer and Buddhist priest.
Explore their story →Laozi
Laozi is the traditional author associated with the Daoist classic Daodejing, whose formation and authorship are debated.
Explore their story →Marcus Aurelius
Marcus Aurelius ruled as Roman emperor from 161 to 180 CE.
Explore their story →Mary Wollstonecraft
Mary Wollstonecraft (1759–1797) was a writer who made education central to her argument for women’s dignity and independence.
Explore their story →Michel de Montaigne
Montaigne (1533–1592) was a French Renaissance humanist whose Essays explore judgment and experience.
Explore their story →Plato
Plato was an ancient Athenian philosopher whose dialogues investigate knowledge, ethics, politics, and reality.
Explore their story →Qoheleth (Ecclesiastes)
Qoheleth is the teaching voice of Ecclesiastes, a book of biblical wisdom whose author is not securely identified.
Explore their story →Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke was a German-language poet and writer whose work explored the relationship between beauty, suffering, life, and death.
Explore their story →Ralph Waldo Emerson
Emerson was an American essayist, poet, and a central figure in New England transcendentalism.
Explore their story →Sima Qian
Sima Qian was a Han court historian who continued a project begun by his father, Sima Tan.
Explore their story →Socrates
Socrates (469–399 BCE) was an Athenian philosopher known through accounts by other writers, especially Plato and Xenophon.
Explore their story →Sons of Korah (psalm superscription)
Psalm 46 belongs to the biblical collection associated by its headings with the sons of Korah.
Explore their story →The Buddha
Gautama Buddha is the teacher at the origin of Buddhism; the Dhammapada preserves teachings in verse.
Explore their story →Walt Whitman
Born on Long Island in 1819, Whitman first published Leaves of Grass in 1855 and kept revising it throughout his life.
Explore their story →Wang Yangming
Wang Yangming (1472–1529) was a Ming thinker and official.
Explore their story →Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma
Zuhayr ibn Abi Sulma was an Arabic poet associated with the late sixth and early seventh centuries.
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