“Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for.”
Letter to Robert McAlmon (4 September 1943), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 217
General sources
Context: Why do we live? Most of us need the very thing we never ask for. We talk about revolution as if it was peanuts. What we need is some frank thinking and a few revolutions in our own guts; to hell with what most of the sons of bitches that I know and myself along with them if I don't take hold of myself and turn about when I need to — or go ahead further if that's the game.
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William Carlos Williams 83
American poet 1883–1963Related quotes
can strike us as perplexing – and also, perhaps, a little unsettling. On general principle, it is a good idea to challenge ourselves in this way about anything we have come to take for granted; the more habitual, the more valuable this line of inquiry.
Punished by Rewards
Indestructible Spirit Conference at La Paz, UFW Headquarters in Keene, California (11 January 1991)
Source: Start with Why: How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone to Take Action
Speech delivered to the Dail (Parliament of Ireland) (28 June 1963)
1963
“Most of the things we need to be most fully alive never come in busyness. They grow in rest.”
Source: The Holy Wild: Trusting in the Character of God
On Literature, Revolution, Entropy and Other Matters (1923)
Context: What we need in literature today are vast philosophic horizons — horizons seen from mastheads, from airplanes; we need the most ultimate, the most fearsome, the most fearless "Why?" and "What next?"
This is what children ask. But then children are the boldest philosophers. They enter life naked, not covered by the smallest fig leaf of dogma, absolutes, creeds. This is why every question they ask is so absurdly naive and so frighteningly complex. The new men entering life today are as naked and fearless as children; and they, too, like children, like Schopenhauer, Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, ask "Why?" and "What next?" Philosophers of genius, children, and the people are equally wise — because they ask equally foolish questions. Foolish to a civilized man who has a well-furnished European apartment with an excellent toilet and a well-furnished dogma.
