A philosopher I admire greatly is Pyrrho of Elis, c. 360–270 BC, arguably the father of scepticism. Can we ever completely trust what we perceive? Since all that we perceive and learn we do through our own senses, is it not an act of foolish arrogance to have so much confidence in the senses? A good philosopher must, therefore, always entertain doubt: so argued Pyrrho. And he tried to live by his philosophy. Diogenes Laertius, the third-century writer famous for having written the world's first scissors-and-paste textbook, records how, when a ship in which Pyrrho was travelling was caught in a big storm, only two creatures aboard were completely at peace—a pig and Pyrrho. Presumably, the former saw no reason to expect calamity from the fact of a stormtossed ship. Indeed, Diogenes Laertius suggests, Pyrrho may even have been a bit envious of the pig, for the pig was not just calm: unlike Pyrrho, it continued to eat.

Given his scepticism, Pyrrho wrote nothing during his ninety long years, for he deemed nothing fit to be immortalized by ink. His philosophy was spread entirely through what he spoke. It is believed that he went to India with Alexander's army and there met some Indian sages who not only believed in writing nothing but had taken a vow against speaking too. Pyrrho came back chastened by the realization that there were others ahead of him in the practice of scepticism.