Action should be soundly based so as to render the chance of failure as necessarily impossible as human capacity can render it. This means it should be based on philosophical principles. The mental mastery of these principles will help to give a right direction to the whole of one's life, just as the correct focusing of a camera will help to ensure satisfactory results in the finished photograph. Every man has worked out the basic ideas by which he lives but only the philosophic man has worked them out consciously. Because of the soundness and impartiality and penetrativeness of its approach, his judgements in the most perplexing matters of practical conduct will therefore be more reliable than those passed by so-called practical men themselves.
-- Notebooks Category 20: What Is Philosophy? > Chapter 1 : Toward Defining Philosophy > # 198
