- Lived:
- c. 477–524 CE · Rome and Ravenna, in Ostrogothic Italy; died a prisoner at Pavia
- Tradition:
- Late Roman Christian Platonism — the last philosopher of the ancient West, and the first schoolmaster of the medieval one
- The Big Idea:
- Fortune can take everything she ever gave you, because none of it was ever truly yours; the one good she cannot touch is the one philosophy leads you to — and from a timeless God's point of view, even your freedom and his knowledge fit together.
- In their words:
- "Eternity is the whole, simultaneous, and perfect possession of unending life."
- If you remember one thing:
- A man awaiting execution wrote a dialogue with Lady Philosophy instead of a plea for mercy — and for a thousand years, whenever Europeans suffered, this was the book they reached for.