Emotions and Feelings

You are surprised, aren’t you, at the contrast between my fame throughout the world… and the isolation and quiet in which I live here. I wished for this isolation all my life, and now I have finally achieved it here in Princeton.

My passionate sense of social justice and social responsibility has always contrasted oddly with my pronounced freedom from the need for direct contact with other human beings and human communities.

It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.

It strikes me as unfair, and even in bad taste, to select a few individuals for boundless admiration, attributing superhuman powers of mind and character to them. This has been my fate, and the contrast between the popular assessment of my powers and achievements and the reality is simply grotesque.

With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.

With fame I become more and more stupid, which of course is a very common phenomenon.

Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.

Thanks to my fortunate idea of introducing the relativity principle into physics, you (and others) now enormously overrate my scientific abilities, to the point where this makes me quite uncomfortable.

Science is a wonderful thing if one does not have to earn a living at it. One should earn one’s living by work of which one is sure one is capable. Only when we do not have to be accountable to anyone can we find joy in scientific endeavor.

Imagination is more important than knowledge. Knowledge is limited. Imagination encircles the world.

Failure and deprivation are the best educators and purifiers.

Life is the desert, life the solitude;

True to the kindred points of heaven and home!

Behold her, single in the field,

We poets in our youth begin in gladness;

To me the meanest flower that blows can give

And by the vision splendid

Whither is fled the visionary gleam?

A timely utterance gave that thought relief,

For oft, when on my couch I lie

It is a beauteous evening, calm and free.

The light that never was, on sea or land,

Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive,

I read the book of Job last night. I don’t think God comes well out of it.