I don’t think philosophers have careers. Business executives or bankers can properly be said to have careers, but devoting one’s life to pursuing the basic truths cannot be considered a career. I experience philosophizing to be the same thing as being alive. For example, I do not understand the distinction between “work” and “relaxation”, or the concept of a “vacation”. How can one take a vacation from thinking about what the point of human existence is, or whether it has any point at all? And how can philosophizing be classified as one’s “working hours”? As far as I can see, philosophizing hours are not “working hours” but instead should be viewed as the hours at which one is awake rather than asleep. Others may call it “work”, but I would call it “doing what it is natural for any conscious being to do”, trying to figure everything out.

Quentin Smith, ‘An interview with Quentin Smith’