Socrates of Athens, who lived before the Common Era, is respected as one of the greatest independent thinkers of all time. Socrates himself refused to be recognized as a teacher. Instead, Plato his well-known student and reporter of Socrates' dialogues tells us he asked to be seen as a "midwife of ideas." Socrates' passion to achieve self-understanding, and the proper ways to live, continues to be studied and emulated to this day.