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My answer to the question "Why do we philosophize?" is as follows. We philosophize for the same reason that we move and speak and laugh and eat and love. In other words, we philosophize because man is a philosophical animal.… We may be as sceptical as we please. Our very scepticism is the confession of an implicit philosophy.

— John Cowper Powys The Complex Vision (1920)

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More quotes by John Cowper Powys

Ambition is the grand enemy of all peace.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

The eternal conflict between love and malice is the eternal contest between life and death. And this contest is what the complex vision reveals, as it moves from darkness to darkness.

The Complex Vision (1920)

The love that interferes and knows not how to leave alone is a love alien to Nature's ways.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

The permanent mental attitude which the sensitive intelligence derives from philosophy is an attitude that combines extreme reverence with limitless skepticism.

The Meaning of Culture (1929)

Man is the animal who weeps and laughs — and writes. If the first Prometheus brought fire from heaven in a fennel-stalk, the last will take it back — in a book.

The Pleasures of Literature (1938)

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