William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet
Letter to James Laughlin (14 January 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219
General sources
Fragment 16 "What is the best provision for old age," in Moral Exhortation (1986), p. 32
William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet
Letter to James Laughlin (14 January 1944), published in The Selected Letters of William Carlos Williams (1957) edited by John C. Thirlwall, p. 219
General sources
“Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.”
David Hume book An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding
Section 1 : Of The Different Species of Philosophy
Source: An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding (1748)
Context: Nature has pointed out a mixed kind of life as most suitable to the human race, and secretly admonished them to allow none of these biases to draw too much, so as to incapacitate them for other occupations and entertainments. Indulge your passion for science, says she, but let your science be human, and such as may have a direct reference to action and society. Abstruse thought and profound researches I prohibit, and will severely punish, by the pensive melancholy which they introduce, by the endless uncertainty in which they involve you, and by the cold reception which your pretended discoveries shall meet with, when communicated. Be a philosopher; but, amidst all your philosophy, be still a man.
Slavoj Žižek (1949) Slovene philosopher
Conversations with Žižek by Slavoj Žižek and Glyn Daly (Cambridge: Polity Press, 2004), p. 54
“No man was ever yet a great poet, without being at the same time a profound philosopher.”
Samuel Taylor Coleridge book Biographia Literaria
Source: Biographia Literaria (1817), Ch. XV
Pierre Hadot (1922–2010) French historian and philosopher
Incommensurables donc, mais aussi inséparables. Pas de discours qui mérite d’être appelé philosophique, s’il est séparé de la vie philosophique, pas de vie philosophique, si elle n’est étroitement liée au discours philosophique. C’est là d’ailleurs que réside le danger inhérent à la vie philosophique: l’ambiguïté du discours philosophique.
Qu'est-ce que la philosophie antique? (1995)
Theodore L. Cuyler (1822–1909) American minister
Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 435.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) logician, one of the first analytic philosophers and political activist
1950s, The Russell-Einstein Manifesto (1955)