Why Study Philosophy?
Heinrich Blücher, via Hannah Arendt:
Advice to students: if you’re inclined to study philosophy, “you can do it only if you know that the most important thing in your life would be to succeed in this and the second most important thing, almost as important, to fail in precisely this.”
Between Friends: The Correspondence of Hannah Arendt and Mary McCarthy 1949-1975, p. 26. (Blücher, Arendt’s husband, taught philosophy at Bard College.)