[bigfoot675]

This sounds like good advice in theory, but if someone isn't even at the stage of knowing what they want to read, I don't think picking a significant book at face value is going to work out well. In fact, I bet it would probably end with a large majority of people reading the first 10 pages of Plato/Socrates/etc., getting confused by the utter lack of context, and giving up. That's what I did the first couple times I "tried to get into philosophy." It took me getting to undergrad philosophy classes to really "get it."

At the very least, if you're going to go for primary sources, find a guide or lecture to lead you through it. Of course primary sources are important to read in philosophy, but in my personal opinion, I would recommend going for an introductory text first and picking primary sources to read from there.

[konjin]

I read Plato's Republic in three weeks at 14.

It was a lot more interesting than anything else at school because it actually talked to you instead of talking at you. If you're going to start anywhere you might as well start there because ethics is an area everyone can understand and the republic is written in a way that anyone with a working brain can appreciate.