“Dialectics and reflection play the same role for the philosopher as does verse for the poet.”

“My role in society, or any artist's or poet's role, is to try and express what we all feel. Not to tell people how to feel. Not as a preacher, not as a leader, but as a reflection of us all.”

John Lennon (1940–1980) English singer and songwriter

“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”

Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria

“The poet…is the man of metaphor: while the philosopher is interested only in the truth of meaning, beyond even signs and names, and the sophist manipulates empty signs…the poet plays on the multiplicity of signifieds.”

Jacques Derrida (1930–2004) French philosopher (1930-2004)

“Cheer'd up himself with ends of verse
And sayings of philosophers.”

Samuel Butler (poet) (1612–1680) poet and satirist

“writers without books, poets without verses, painters without pictures p198”

Fernando Sabino (1923–2004) Brazilian writer

“The philosopher does not just ‘play’ with metaphors: his play is of a ‘formidable seriousness’, for it is designed to oppose modernity’s hatred for art, to obliterate precisely the opposition between play and seriousness, dream and reality.”

Sarah Kofman (1934–1994) philosopher from France

“Even among the earliest Stoics, Logic or Dialectic does not occupy the same place as in Plato: it is considered only as an instrument which is to be used for the other divisions of Philosophy.”

George Long (1800–1879) English classical scholar

“There were many Hayeks: Hayek, the political scientist; Hayek, the economist; Hayek, the philosopher of social science; Hayek, the psychologist. Even in these different roles, he played many parts.”

Mark Blaug (1927–2011) British economist

“Poets and philosophers are the unacknowledged legislators of the world.”

Percy Bysshe Shelley (1792–1822) English Romantic poet