"Why do I insist on calling myself a “philosopher” even though neither philosophers want me nor I want them? Because I entered this discipline, with its venerated rules, as a child and my loyalty has never wavered. For more than fifty years I have studied it without distraction. I have grasped its secrets and reticence, I have seen its exaltations and declines, its excesses and forgetfulness. Philosophers on the altar and then hurled down. I witnessed their reign and the dominance of their ideas, and I studied it more than that of leaders and commanders. I had lasting loves, I imitated models (but how can one imitate the Idea, alas). I grew old there. I know three or four things about it better than my contemporaries. I have nothing more to add."
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Manlio Sgalambro
Manlio Sgalambro (9 December 1924 – 6 March 2014) was an Italian philosopher, writer, and poet.
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