Gellhorn on philosophy

And finally, dear boy, I think philosophy is a parlor game. I do not see how it relates to life at all; nor to the condition of man. It is a very high-toned entertainment between men of equal and detached intellect. And in a way, it repels me. I think more highly of Florence Nightingale who did something about human suffering in hospitals than about any philosopher.

For where has philosophy saved; and where - when possible - has it not been used for evil ends. (Think of Hitler and Nietzsche.) I am an admirer of Galileo, who discovered a fact, and died saying: E pure si muove ['And yet, it moves']. But not philosophers. Finish your stint and leave it. Join the endless chain of people living here on the ground: we are lost, but the best we can do is, each one, be the boy with his finger in the dike. And somehow, I find the higher flights of the mind very cold. And if they hadn't flown so goddamned high we wouldn't have the H-bomb either.

- Martha Gellhorn, in a letter to her stepson Sandy Matthews, 27 April 1968, quoted in Caroline Moorehead (ed.), Selected Letters of Martha Gellhorn, New York, 2006, p.342