It is a fact that every philosopher of eminence for the last two centuries has either been murdered, or, at the least, been very near to it; insomuch, that if a man calls himself a philosopher, and never had his life attempted, rest assured there is nothing in him; and against Locke's philosophy in particular, I think it an unanswerable objection, (if we needed any) that, although he carried his throat about with him in this world for seventy-two years, no man ever condescended to cut it.
- Thomas De Quincy, "On Murder", 19 (Quoted by Carl Trueman, The Rise and Triumph of the Modern Self, Footnote 68)
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